ABSTRACT. This autoethnographic research explores one Black woman’s experiences as teacher to affluent white children and families in private, pedagogically-progressive ECE institutions in the U.S. Grounded in Black Feminist theorizing, findings describe how these institutions appropriate and perform politically anesthetized Black cultural wisdom for the benefit of white children and families. Responding on Nxumalo’s (2021) concept of Black Futurities in ECE and Souto-Manning’s (2022) call to establish a desire-centered trajectory of justice for the field, this presentation concludes with the first author's vision of Black-affirming futures in progressive education.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the teacher preparation experiences of two immigrant Early Childhood Teachers of Color, using Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), LatCrit (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001), and Nepantla (Anzaldúa, 1987). It asks: How do these teachers recall their preparation program experiences? Methods include FotoHistorias, Plàticas (conversational interviews), and Poetic-Counterstories. Findings reveal participants feeling undervalued, delegitimized, isolated, and under-supported, challenging deficit-based narratives. The study underscores how racial/ethnic identities impact Teachers of Color in Early Childhood Education, advocating for the amplification of intersectionally marginalized voices in educational research.

ABSTRACT. In this session we embrace the principles of "dis-finished" pedagogy and the ideas from postfoundational theories that seek to agitate existing structures and extractivist practices within early childhood teacher-education. Our ‘re/posting(s) research collective’ will share experimental, partial shifts in pedagogical practices that compel us to ask questions such as: What are our responsibilities in designing encounters and assignments that ask students to think about learning and curriculum making radically differently? We will share how these questions have been living in our collective dialogue and encouraging us to experiment, meddle and aerate curriculum and practicum pedagogy in early childhood education.

ABSTRACT. In this panel session, we will share three papers showcasing the systemic injustices experienced by young children with disabilities and their families. The first paper explores how children with disabilities are routinely excluded from early learning experiences through expulsion. The second paper will explore ways in which early childhood educators attempted to use trauma-informed practices in their classroom but inadvertently caused more harm to children and caregivers. The third paper extends key findings, and further highlights the pervasive deficit-oriented gaze that persists even after families have gained access to the early childhood special education system.

ABSTRACT. This interactive session is the first transnational gathering in a series of nine meetings initiated in 2022 among various groups of scholars, educators, policy makers, and philanthropists in the U.S., with a next-gen early care and education research-practice-advocacy agenda. These convenings have existed in the spirit of mycelial networks–the hidden, under-explored connections that often thrive in seemingly ruinous and inhospitable environments. While the mushroom gets noticed, the mycelium is where the action is at (Ostendorf-Rodríguez, 2023, Tsing, 2015). In this session, we will provide background on previous meetings and ask attendees to engage in transnational possibilities for such work.

ABSTRACT. We challenge the prevailing narratives on socio-economic integration, emphasizing the critical omission of familial perspectives in policy implementation. NYC’s attempt to address school segregation through socio-economic integration at the preschool level has been lukewarm. Policymakers attempted to merge funding streams without input from a crucial stakeholder: families. We seek to reclaim those forgotten voices by interviewing fifteen diverse families. Using Critical Policy Analysis, we found widespread support for integration, tempered by concerns about logistics, power dynamics, and misconceptions deeply rooted in race and class bias. The study advocated for inclusive policymaking, providing insights to redefine and re-imagine preschool socio-economic integration.

ABSTRACT. Utilizing Winn’s (2019) Pedagogical Stances, we narrow in on the concept of what “Justice Matters” looks like in reconceptualizing family engagement and family engagement education. Drawing on focus group data from students in an early elementary master’s program in the U.S. South, we consider changes made to a course on family engagement related to Winn’s Five Pedagogical stances, including moments where students made connections to “Justice Matters” and concepts of historic harm in home-school relationships, as well as moments of missed connection. We then conclude with suggestions for a family engagement education course with “Justice Matters” at its core.

ABSTRACT. Equitable access to high-quality child care includes care that is responsive to the work schedules and resource needs of families and the developmental needs of children. Significant proportions of low-income families work nontraditional hours (NTH), yet the early childhood field has focused almost exclusively on child care provision during daytime, weekday hours with limited attention to quality, supply, and workforce experiences during NTH. Correcting this omission is an equity issue, especially given that NTH care is both provided and used disproportionately by low-income populations of color.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores how notions of memory relate to the discourses on childhood and nationalism. It also looks at how violence circulates in memories, specifically within an African context. It raises the question of what and whose memories are instilled in early childhood educational curriculums and to what end? Through interviews with Kenyan individuals connected to the education reform in various capacities, I explore how memories rise, fall, and contest each other. These contestations are often not about conflicting accounts as so much as untangling who or what is entitled to speak for that past in the present.

ABSTRACT. This paper illustrates my use of performance-based classroom and research methods (e.g., participatory and devised theatre-making and scripting) alongside established and innovative uses of ethnography to explore young girls' emergent understandings and beliefs around the often-marginalized topics of puberty and menstruation.

ABSTRACT. This themed panel examines the always already political relationships between children, childhood objects, historical and current educational discourses, and pedagogical approaches. Through wide-ranging post qualitative examinations of glitter, mass-produced educational toys, literacy program mascots, blocks, and drawings, the papers in this panel take up theories of materiality and more-than-human agency in order to imagine the possibilities that lie in divesting from commonsense notions of child-object relations, including more just and equitable policies and practices at local and less-local levels.

ABSTRACT. Panel presenting a joint research project on gradually stronger intensification (amplification of efficiency, targeting, scope, force, power, pervasiveness, etc.) in relation to Danish institutionalized childhood and the welfare state. The presentation consists of 4 parts – 3 presenting subprojects – one a separate UK-based research project: Paper 1 sketches the overall frame – i.e., the theoretical foundation in previous childhood theories and critical theory. Papers 2 and 3 concern subprojects, addressing problems of intensification within a selected perspective (children’s and parents’ respectively). Paper 4 concerns a Danish electronic platform Famly and how it intensifies and amplifies institutional coercive biopolitical governance.

ABSTRACT. Playful collaborative practices can have implications for producing knowledge, moving beyond a traditional understanding of academic knowledge to inspire and encourage playful methodologies and workshops in higher education. Drawing on posthuman thinking, this workshop will explore how intra-acting and producing diffractive breaks through concepts such as interference and difference (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2007) can become visible in teaching. The participants are invited to explore natural material and intertwining soundscapes with empirical material from our previous research to trace memories and imagination through interweaving bodies, places, and artifacts.

ABSTRACT. Criminal records background checks were legislated in the 1990s as a precursor to employment in early childhood education. Since then, background checks have grown increasingly stringent. In 2018, the federal government mandated revisions to background check policies, requiring all employees in a licensed childcare center or family home childcare program to undergo a national fingerprint background check. This paper explores how these increasingly stringent background checks exclude a disproportionate number of people from employment in early childhood education. Critical race theory and critiques of neoliberalism offer theoretical support to interrogate how these policies perpetuate systemic and institutional racism.

ABSTRACT. In this study, inspired by David Elkind's concept of "hurried child", the problem of "hurried teachers" is discussed. It is intented to reveal what kind of feelings, thoughts and experiences preschool teachers have in this 'professional' rush, what learning experiences they have to sacrifice in this pace, the situations they have difficulty, their observations about the children and their alternative suggestions on the subject. The findings will be discussed in the context of the current manifestation of early childhood education in schools, its social consequences and right-based implications regarding pedagogical justice for young children and professional freedom for the teachers.

ABSTRACT. This presentation addresses the critical gap in early childhood education regarding the conceptualization of the disabled child subject and the siloing of pedagogy and education for children with disabilities by challenging the prevailing allegiance to developmental psychology and advocating for diverse theoretical frameworks to create inclusive educational environments. Drawing on insights from a year-long pedagogist working group of the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network (ECPN), this presentation will engage with critical disability studies, posthumanism, feminist studies, and queer crip studies to imagine responsive, inclusive, and ethically grounded pedagogical practices.

ABSTRACT. This presentation describes our work in an inclusive early childhood teacher education program to center teacher growth at the intersection of language, culture, race, gender, and dis/ability. We will share our interrogation and reflexivity as we make meaning of inclusivity, its defining attributes, and the paradox of inclusivity that persists. We describe our guiding principles: 1) educating practitioners to care for and teach children to become teachers of each child holding the conditions of learning and life circumstances central; and 2) centering each child’s access to just and responsive instruction; spaces of belonging; and family-centered, socially just pedagogies and practices.

ABSTRACT. Pursuing justice for children of color, children with disabilities, and those at the intersection of those identities requires explicitly addressing racism and ableism (Love & Beneke, 2021). Yet, early educator preparation and professional development (PD) reinforces white, middle-class, monolingual, non-disabled norms (e.g., Ferri & Bacon, 2011; Saavedra & Pérez & 2018). This session will report a critical analysis of PD provided to Head Start teachers. The analysis shows how PD reinforces deficit-based views of multiply-marginalized young children and particularly offers insight into ways PD can better affirm disability identity while promoting teachers’ use of inclusive and culturally responsive practices.

ABSTRACT. This study contests the assumption that “difficult knowledge”—topics believed to provoke discomfort—is beyond young children's grasp. Our ethnographic study in three Montessori classrooms uncovers children’s unexpected ease with complex subjects like gender identity, race, and food insecurity, diverging from adult perceptions. Findings reveal not only children's capability to engage with these themes but also the missed educational opportunities for deeper exploration. Urging a shift towards pedagogies that value children's perspectives, our work aligns with a justice-oriented approach, advocating for inclusive and empathetic early education that truly acknowledges young learners’ potential.

ABSTRACT. This study is part of a larger qualitative project on Anti-Racist education in Early Childhood. It focuses on teaching the hidden histories, counternarratives of black history to pre-service early childhood educators in order to disrupt the continued pattern of white-washing history and normalizing white supremacy in the United States. The central question is are they too young to learn the truth about our history?

ABSTRACT. Despite mounting evidence that young children are privy to and can discern controversial issues, early childhood educators frequently report feeling unprepared to respond to young children’s inquiries. This study explored early childhood pre-service teachers’ engagements with what they perceived to be controversial issues. Using a qualitative approach, we generated data from observations, audio-recordings, and documents and constructed narratives to represent our interpretations of the PSTs’ experiences. We described PSTs’ perceptions of and approaches to exploring controversial issues with young children, and identified the opportunities teacher educators provided PSTs in order to support their engagement with controversial issues.

ABSTRACT. Disruptions interrupt/disturb/halt/break the flow. They force us to pause, sometimes to re-examine. In ECE settings, children (and adults) that cause such disruptions are often viewed as a nuisance. In this panel we bring together the Situational Approach, the idea of a competent system and a framework of critically examining power in order to reframe and re-think the way we view disruptions, disturbances and irritations in the system and examine the idea that instead of brushing them aside we can recognise them as calls for more involvement, participation and justice.

ABSTRACT. The Learning Outside Together (LOT) project aims to transform approaches to learning for educators and the children they care for. Born of the global pandemic, LOT integrates Indigenous wisdom and promising practices, centering outdoor play and the Indigenous concept "land as teacher." Grounded in Albert Marshall's conceptual framework of “two-eyed seeing” and a decolonized approach to curriculum and pedagogy, LOT blends asynchronous online content and a collaborative mentorship model which centers plurality, relationality, and storytelling. LOT commits to authentic Indigenous and non-Indigenous partnership and reducing barriers to access to ensure equitable participation across British Columbia's diverse ethnic and geographic landscape.

ABSTRACT. In this panel discourses and practices of care in early childhood education are applied to the reconceptualisation of teacher education. Who cares for the carers takes up a challenge to respond to a question, asked recently in Aotearoa New Zealand: Who teaches the teachers? That question was asked by advocates for a revival of universal theories of learning in the study of teaching. Our concern is not how teachers are normalized as teaching machines, rather we explore the ways in which care is taken up as an essential experience in a teacher’s experience of the study of early childhood education.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on in-depth phenomenological interview data, this paper investigates how Asian American early childhood teachers navigate and negotiate Asian American invisibility in early childhood classrooms by incorporating concrete aspects of culture, despite the criticism on the tourist approach of teaching cultural diversity. Informed by Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit) as the theoretical framework (Iftikar & Museus, 2018), this paper highlights unique racialized experiences of Asian American teachers in PreK-3rd grade classrooms. The paper discusses accounts of Asian American early childhood teachers grappling with the tension between representing one’s own culture and being essentialized as token Asians.

ABSTRACT. I use a critical social-psychoanalytic perspective to understand the intergenerational sequelae of colonization, war, and displacement on the lives of children as well as considering children living in families that are inheritors of historical trauma that has led to disruptions in ancestral lineages across generations. I use Aulagnier’s work on the occlusions that can constrain subject formation in infancy and Butler’s theory to articulate an ethical relational pedagogy for young children that has the potential to disorganize the apparatus of recognition and normalization so that individuals might experience a “performative proclamation of a self that has been undone and redone”?

ABSTRACT. In this case study we ask: How have the concepts of citizenship and democracy been constructed, reconstructed, and resisted in one state-endorsed early childhood (PreK-3rd grade) Using critical discourse analysis, we examine legislation and state-endorsed early childhood social studies curriculum enacted in one U.S. state between 2021 and 2024. Our findings highlight nihilistic neoliberalism and authoritarian practices contextualizing the education of young children. We argue that authoritarian practices are controlling the content and mediation of early childhood social studies curricula in ways that construct and reinforce right-wing conceptions of citizenship and democracy.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the experiences of 8 LGBTQ+ early childhood educators in Ontario, Canada to understand the current challenges in navigating the heteronormative spaces of childcare. Through a queer theoretical framework, with intersectionality in mind, the narratives, and stories shared reminds us that early childhood spaces (i.e., childcare settings) operates within the dominant discourses of (hetero)normativity. The LGBTQ+ early childhood educators in this study challenge us to uphold our commitment in acknowledging children as social actors in their learning of the work which includes grasping the complexities of gender and sexuality.

ABSTRACT. Our reader theatre performance will explore how a pro-active set of parents of gender-diverse children (below the age 9) describe and navigate children’s complex questions. Questions various young children asked included such things as, “do you know what I am?”, “ will I always have a penis?” “when will I be a mommy?”. Parents gave answers which included information about sexuality, bodies, reproduction, and potential future selves. But, answers exceeded cis- and heterosexual assumptions. Impressed by parents’ ability to respect child’s emerging and complex gender-diverse subjectivities, we analyzed this work using queer theory. We articulate gender-inclusivity and the young child.

ABSTRACT. This paper “thinks-with” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) posthuman theories of affect (Berlant, 1991) to embrace otherwise political imaginaries for current book banning efforts that work to reassert the gender order, namely by aligning heterosexuality with the idea of “core national culture.” I begin from the premise that, as white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal forces have historically shaped Western aesthetic practices (James, 2020), gender and hetero-sexuality affectively extend into/entangle with texts, particularly fairytales. I aim to make visible and trouble heteropatriarchal metanarratives that violently move via (not-so/)subtle relational networks, including book censorship, state/federal care, parental protesting, and even happily ever after.

ABSTRACT. This presentation is run by a group of teachers who recently graduated from a graduate teacher preparation program at the intersections of early childhood education, multilingual education, and special education, where both students and faculty were primarily women of color. The presentation focuses on how to apply critical theories in early childhood to teaching, administration, and community engagement in early childcare settings.

ABSTRACT. This play- and arts-based workshop will engage visionary praxis to individually and collectively (re)imagine ourselves, the future of early childhood care and education, and the world at large. Centered in abolition feminism, participants will explore radical imaginaries, self-reflection, and freedom dreaming through play, collage, and other experiential practices inspired by Theater of the Oppressed, creative arts, mindfulness, and picturebooks. Together we will engage creative expression as a way to sustain our work to increase justice for young children, families and communities.

ABSTRACT. The design of outdoor play spaces in child care centers can create particular ways of doing and being which impact children’s play. The design of spaces may exclude children from certain aspects of the world, however on the other hand children may shape these spaces by their own ways of being and knowing. Drawing on data from my PhD research project at a childcare center, I share the ways the design of the outdoor space shaped children’s daily experiences and also how the children’s relations with the more-than-human world contributed to the design.

ABSTRACT. Though an accessible mode for engaging with content across disciplines, official spaces for drawing in K-5 curriculum are dwindling. I use Bennett’s (2001) enchantment to argue for drawing as an ethical occupation. I share microanalyses of children’s drawing(s) to illustrate crossings, mobility, moments of wonder. Bennett suggests that enchantment propels ethical relations with the world and can be fostered through the senses and play. Connecting with RECE’s vision of challenging assumptions of children and childhoods, I argue that drawing pedagogy opens spaces for children’s ethical practice. In sharing the “marvelous specificity” of children’s drawing(s), I envision a more enchanted education.

ABSTRACT. This workshop explores the impacts of a dual language Reggio Emilia-inspired public preschool program on children’s and families’ bilingual identity development. Drawing on interviews with caregivers, teachers, and administrators, we explore the intersections of multilingual education and a Reggio Emilia approach in early childhood.

ABSTRACT. Drawing from the theme of RECE2024: To disturb the “long-lasting environmental and policy practices…of colonialism”, I highlight the daily practices made by Sudanese American parents to guide their children in internalizing the Sudanism identity. Utilizing qualitative interviews with Sudanese American parents in the United States, observations, and home artifacts, I study how Sudanese American parents of young children (Prek-3rd grade) foster their children’s Sudanism identity. Consistent with Tobin, Arzubiaga, and Adair’s 2013 Children Crossing Borders project, in this paper, I intend to bring the concerns of minoritized Sudanese American parents of young children to the RECE audience.

ABSTRACT. Mobility plays an important role in children’s identities, as their identities are developed, influenced, entwined, and in constant inner negotiation in the social environments they inhabit. Drawing on phenomenological case study data collected over 2 months, I investigated four 4-year-old Latin American newcomer children’s experiences, (transnational) funds of knowledge, and identities. Findings demonstrated children’s attempts to connect their home country’s experiences with those in Canada developing their identities and sense of belonging in a new country. To fill a gap in the literature, I emphasize the importance of acknowledging and valuing their cultural, social, and linguistic repertoires.

ABSTRACT. We share tensions within our research and teaching projects, as a result of our commitments to teaching and learning with children in ways that create more just present and futures. We draw from decolonizing and new materialist methodologies to recognize the importance of teaching and researching in ways that share power and are justice focused, as a matter of respect for young children, their ideas, and contributions. We conclude with insights for teaching and research approaches which embrace agency as social and collective, coming into being when we take a relational and critical posthuman perspective.

ABSTRACT. This study highlights the impact of curricular and environmental shifts in public education on children’s agency and their perceptions of the educational experience. Emphasizing emergent curriculum and posthumanist perspectives, it underscores the importance of elevating children’s voices and their role as co-researchers. This study was conducted in a Midwestern U.S. public school district, utilizing narrative inquiry and semi-structured interviews. The author investigates and analyzes discrepancies between initial themes determined from kindergarten child-created Documentaries and their later reflections, demonstrating the influence of social context on their perceptions. Emerging findings demonstrate the impact social context has on their views of education.

ABSTRACT. In 2024 we all live with a heightened sense of vulnerability. Daily, the rights of children and families are breeched in unconscionable ways. It is ever more urgent to sustain a sense of hopefulness and to imagine the world otherwise. All hope involves risk, and risk entails vulnerability to failure. While vulnerability is often externally imposed, it can also be turned into an agentive choice, a source of strength and connectivity to students of any age. Through text images, and sound this performance aims to offer an expanded vocabulary for engaging with the practical and emotional realities of living vulnerably.

ABSTRACT. Neoliberal agendas focused on preparing children for futures deemed “appropriate” by adults are problematic, producing a narrow view of what matters in early childhood education/care that collide with and fail to acknowledge children as active protagonists in matters that impact their lives. This session presents three papers that (1) disrupt current taken-for-granted practices where atmospheric walls constrain children and families’ participation in ways that impact their everyday lives and (2) offer alternatives through co-constructing pedagogical assemblages (Bennett, 2010) that foster affective atmospheres of hospitality and challenge dominant conceptions of “proper” emotion for adults and children (Zembylas et al, 2023).

ABSTRACT. While in many global contexts children's play and learning patterns have become increasingly digital and interactive, the use and benefits of digital play are contested within much of Pakistan's postcolonial landscape. In this research, I aim to explore Pakistani parents’ beliefs regarding children's engagement with digital play. By applying a decolonial lens, I seek to understand and challenge parents’ perceptions of children’s digital play in a postcolonial turned neoliberal context and explore how in digital play, children both participate in and recreate or resist globalized demands, articulating local Pakistani childhoods.

ABSTRACT. AI, Alexa, Siri, household robots, and industrial and medical robots are here to stay. How can we work to incorporate STEM education, including robotics, into the learning of racially and culturally diverse young children? How do we ensure that these children and their families are seen, heard, and properly represented in the world of STEM education? In this session, we present a review of research literature on culturally responsive computing to highlight how engaging diverse families and using their funds of knowledge are critical to making STEM education in general and robotics education in particular accessible to racially minoritized children.

ABSTRACT. The Ministry of Education (MoE) issued Guidelines for Quality Assessment of Kindergarten Care and Education (The Guide) in 2022, emphasizing process quality. Although the preliminary monitoring results indicate a positive impact on quality improvement, the underlying value of The Guide has not been adequately addressed. This research adopts Ames' Confucian philosophy of Family Feeling (2023), which emphasizes relationships over individualism and serves as a culturally shared moral value. A coherent understanding of the one and the many maximizes the functioning of the self and includes diversity. Analyses suggest the importance of reconceptualizing assessment relationally in addition to instrumental techniques.

ABSTRACT. When discussing issues of justice/injustice in ECEC with students and professionals, we are in danger of imposing our academic perspectives of what justice/injustice means. Instead, we are interested in asking those working with children what they perceive as issues of justice for themselves, children, and our field. In our work with ECEC practitioners and students in both Germany and the United States, we hope to reframe our preconceived notions of justice in ECEC, as we open ourselves to their perceptions of issues of justice, as well as the similarities, differences, and transnational issues in the American and German contexts.

ABSTRACT. This paper is produced as a way to encourage the coagulation and haemorrhaging of Higher Education (HE) Early Childhood Studies (ECS) students, babies, early childhood practitioner and researcher stories and other bodily knowledges, at particular moments and how thinking-with-touch re-turns research ‘data’ over and over again. Thinking with the twists and spirals of teaching-and-leaking data threads, that severe and connect, corrode, but remain vital, become unsightly, ghastly and violent as I move through the paper.

ABSTRACT. This presentation considers the realm of knowledge in ECE; what knowledge is valued, and how different types of knowledge position children and educators.  Two examples informed by different types of knowledge are provided: one from an Indigenous educator and one from a national assessment of young children’s development. They reflect practices in ECE settings, and due to governance and regulations, both could occur in the same context. We provide an insight into the disparate and often irreconcilable understandings of knowledge that inform educators’ everyday work and conclude with suggestions for more equitable approaches, identifying some of the challenges.

ABSTRACT. In recent years there has been great enthusiasm about the “science of reading” or phonics-based reading instruction resulting in the passage of numerous state laws mandating phonics-based reading instruction. I ask questions about the “science of reading.” Where does this method come from? What scientific principles is it based on? How convincing are they? How does the research of “science of reading” relate to other existing research in literacy? Finally, and most importantly for this paper, how do the new laws and policies based on the “science of reading” affect teachers who are are tasked with implementing them in schools.

ABSTRACT. This paper will explore and discuss ethical challenges that may arise when doing research among children aged 0-3. As a part of my Ph.D-study I am doing fieldwork in different preschool settings. The study has a qualitative approach, and the method being used is participating observation. In this paper ethical considerations (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005) and the view of young children (Cannella, 1997) in research (Beazley et al., 2009; Robson, 2018; Spyrou, 2019, 2022, Wyness, 2012) will be discussed. In the discussion, I will employ topics concerning children’s agency and voice, and their rights as participants in research.

ABSTRACT. Caregivers of toddlers are often concerned with their children’s language acquisition by comparing their children’s development to children’s developmental milestones, which results in overlooking the toddlers’ creative extraverbal communication. Extraverbal language by preverbal toddlers can be more expressive than verbal language. This study analyzes five toddlers’ direction of their gazes and body movements in the 90-second clip taken during preliminary ethnographic fieldwork in the summer of 2022 at the NYC Early Childhood Center. The analysis shows the peripheral participation of three toddlers by utilizing their extraverbal language in a conversation with their peers and a teacher about a stuffed animal.

ABSTRACT. Baby’s First Years is the first large-scale neuroscientific study aiming to establish a causal connection between family income and children’s brain development in the United States. Through a discourse analysis of a TED talk given by one of the study’s principal investigators and the YouTube comments users posted in response, this paper situates the scientific investigation and arguments of Baby’s First Years in an existing cultural apparatus of success and failure. In doing so, the paper challenges universal assumptions about children’s brain development and points to more nuanced ways of interrogating educational disparities in the United States.

ABSTRACT. A year-long study conducted with Native American preschoolers examined their lived experiences as portrayed in their drawings and accompanying stories (Saiyed & Irwing, 2017). Drawing was used as a meaning-making framework (Anning & Ring, 2004; Wright, 2007) and a strength-based approach (Galinsky, 2020) that amplified children’s voices and affirmed their lived experiences. Following a research overview (using videoclips and photographs of children’s drawings and stories), audience members will be invited to participate in Arts-based methods as interlocutors and partners with storytellers/artists. We will cultivate and practice approaches that affirm children’s lived experiences as an imperative in the pursuit of justice.

ABSTRACT. Emerging strategies for achieving racial justice for young Black children in the United States are grounded in infant and early childhood mental health principles or those that recognize the importance of having a full range of emotional expressions. For many young Black children, their teachers view their emotional expressions as aggressive, and a show of defiance, often leading to their exclusion. Given this context, this paper will discuss findings that revealed the importance of understanding racial/ethnic socialization when engaging in emotional learning with Black children. Emotion-focused strategies for teachers who work with Black children will be provided.

ABSTRACT. This study centers the mathematical experiences of one Black girl during playful mathematics activities in her kindergarten classroom, drawing on video analysis of her engagement in 14 activities. During play, Serena was able to become a mathematical leader, allowing her to see her own engagement in mathematical discourses as ideologically consistent with who she was in other social spaces. More broadly, the study demonstrates that bringing play into mathematics classrooms creates more joyful experiences and allows children to enter into mathematics in ways that do not require that they subsume their own ways of being to more alien school discourses.

ABSTRACT. This research confronts the racialized displacement inherent to gentrification within Columbia Heights, Washington D.C. Focusing on the walking of preschool children from predominantly Latin American immigrant families, it exposes the complex effects of racial gentrification centering marginalized voices to illuminate historical exclusions and foster visions of justice in ECE. Employing a posthumanist approach, children’s ‘walking-with’ as a critical ethnographic tool reveals how children viscerally experience and embody shifting socio-spatial landscapes. Using 20 minutes of video footage ‘data’ as a threshold allows us to shape assemblages of children’s movement in response to their notices and encounters with materials during walking.