ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I will share my ongoing journey via teacher educator teacher-research as I examine a collaborative learning experience with undergraduate early childhood teacher education students. Stemming from a training on child sexual abuse, we explored the idea of healthy sexual development in young children by examining children’s literature that fit the topic. I draw on class conversations and reflections on learning to examine threads in my perceptions of students’ responses to the materials and topics, which involved much debate and discomfort as we found openings to consider how this work serves to empower young children.

ABSTRACT. In recent decades, health has become a site for addressing social justice. Using Project Head Start as a case, this article argues that without reflecting on the historical formation of “health,” the good intention of improving “health” disparities could reinforce structural inequality. To denaturalize health discourses, this article first sketched two layers of conceptualizations of health; secondly, it explored how these conceptualizations emerged in the two deficient health discourses from the 1960s to the 1980s. This article argues that we must be cautious about strategies and apparatus to make “healthy children” and its possible effects.

ABSTRACT. This presentation shares how educators, children, and researchers at one early childhood education program in Toronto (Canada) co-create locally meaningful pedagogies toward reconfiguring the logics that we make perceptible for understanding bodies and fatness. Our intention is to disrupt existing oppressive and unjust relations with fat that utilize logics of individual responsibility, regulation, and inevitability. We experiment with everyday practices that defy the linear body logics dictated by child development – where connections between bodies, fat, and time are understood through predictability, accumulation, and finality – and figure out, collectively, how to discern lived bodied rhythms and temporalities with children.

ABSTRACT. In this themed panel, editors of and contributors to the anthology Postdevelopmental Approaches to Digital Arts in Childhood deconstruct developmentalist logic around children’s engagement with digital media where the focus is on what the digital ‘does to’ children’s bodies and brains to instead explores children’s digital arts practices, wallowing in the richness of their digital play and artistic experimentation as seen through various postdevelopmental lenses.

ABSTRACT. This paper puts forward what else is possible outside of the dominant discourses on climate change education and science narratives that are human-centric and fail to consider the relationship between humans and more-than-human beings. Based on this lacuna, the authors present theoretical perspectives or worldviews on how to accomplish a more holistic sense or understanding of environmental sustainability- indigenous knowledge, using this perspective to provide a position on how to educate young children to live in the present while pursuing a healthy, just, and sustainable future.

ABSTRACT. This research explores the integration of Native Hawaiian education practices in early childhood settings, emphasizing their impact on broader Indigenous education. Focusing on Indigenous values and ECE, the study delves into the implementation of Native Hawaiian educational approaches in Hawaiʻi. It specifically examines insights from three alaka‘i wahine (female leaders) who have served as administrators of programs aimed at serving Native Hawaiian families with strong family-engagement components. By sharing these perspectives, the research aims to inform educational practices in diverse settings aspiring to honor and integrate Indigenous knowledge, contributing to the broader discourse on Indigenous education and cultural sustainability.

ABSTRACT. In this session, we present three papers that provide snapshots of first grade children’s storied play (both outdoors and indoors) in three Canadian classrooms. Each snapshot directs our attention to the kinds of emergent storying children engage with in free play settings (2 papers) and more structured settings (1 paper). By mapping the children’s movements (Latour, 2005) and thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2022), we provide an analysis of the ways these children’s movements might help us reconceptualize approaches to formal writing instruction typically used with young children.

ABSTRACT. Over 30 years of reconceptualist thinking has shown us that universal approaches to teaching young children need to be contested (e.g. Yelland & Frantz-Bentley, 2018) and research on innovative curriculum, pedagogies and assessment can provide case studies of the ways in which early childhood education can reflect the diverse communities that we live in and be respectful of a multiplicity of ways of being and doing. In creating these learning scenarios we are fulfilling our obligations to voice how we can engage in (re)imagining more just futures for children and their families to recognise their funds of knowledge.

ABSTRACT. The growing concern for quality early childhood education in Ghana, this study explored how learning environment for Kindergarten Education (KE) in the disadvantaged, rural Offinso North District of Ghana can be constructed to promote optimal development of children. The children in the early childhood learning environment at the rural areas are considered as learners, parents or caretakers, co-constructor of knowledge and peer to other children as well. Development of children in the rural areas are characterized by various responsibilities that impact them negatively. The rural child is capable of constructing his or her own knowledge based on the resources available.

ABSTRACT. This themed interactive panel is a collaborative space that connects research about early childhood teacher assistants in Chile from a critical perspective. The three studies draw on the experiences of teacher’s assistants to interrogate hegemonic discourses about early childhood teachers (ECE) professionalism in the policy debate and practice. The purpose of this panel is to highlight alternative ways to construct knowledge about the role of assistants to contribute to a more comprehensive development of public policies in this field that promote social justice for the ECE workforce and therefore children and families.

ABSTRACT. Trends in teacher education periodically shift to appropriately prepare future educators. The current educational landscape calls for underutilized methodologies like the parallel process to be normalized. We posit that teacher candidates benefit from immersion in parallel pedagogical experiences where they personally experience the methods they are expected to implement as educators. Preparatory activities of this nature establish the foundation for culturally relevant teaching - a philosophical lens that is critical for practitioners who endeavor to positively shape the learning environments of young, diverse learners. This discussion provides implications for a paradigm shift in teacher education planning and practices.

ABSTRACT. Centers for Children and Families (CCFs) emerged in Italy in the late '80s to provide comprehensive support for new parents and their children under the guidance of educators. Our presentation highlights the initial findings of an ongoing training-research initiative focused on assessing the accessibility of CCFs in Modena city (Italy). The overarching goal is to develop an innovative educational approach tailored to meet the needs of vulnerable families and enhance their engagement to promote equity and social justice. Through focus group, observations and in-depth interviews, we work to improve the accessibility of the centers and the participation among fragile families.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses on the existence of digital play in Korean preschool classrooms and the teacher’s perception of digital play. Children are surrounded by various digital technologies. As the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum (national curriculum) emphasizes child- and play-centered curriculum, many classrooms encourage children’s autonomy and play. However, this is often limited to non-digital play in many classrooms. The study aims to listen to the teacher’s perception of young children’s digital play and the relations between the teacher’s thoughts and the material and play in the classroom. Qualitative analysis including participant observation and interviews will be used.

ABSTRACT. Understanding agency as entwined with social and cultural context (Abebe, 2019:2), we use a political reading of care ethics (Hobart & Kneese, 2020:3) to consider how the museum as a ‘space of social care’ (Morse, 2020:185) welcomes and supports young children and families as cultural citizens (Schaffer, 2021:26). Our findings, generated through our participatory research programme, demonstrate how museum environments enable children to experience agency, a sense of belonging, and interconnectedness. In museums, children and adults are co-inquirers, with freedom to follow fascinations: engaging in dialogue and bringing new perspectives that challenge pre-conceptions around whose knowledge counts in these spaces.

ABSTRACT. Black women’s contributions to social movements are too often undervalued and overlooked. Nevertheless, their impact is profound. For example, Megan Madison ran for the governing board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children on an explicitly racial justice platform in 2016. By the end of her term, the board approved its first position statement on Advancing Equity, and revised the definition of Developmentally Appropriate Practice to include anti-bias education. In this session, Ijumaa Jordan and her mentee will share stories and strategies to continue to advance an abolitionist agenda in early childhood education, through thick and thin.

ABSTRACT. Gathering with/by picture books by Indigenous artists, and in conversation with Indigenous authors, this research proposes artful inquiry with educators attending to Indigenous storybooks. The project is nurtured by Sto-lo Scholar Jo-ann Archibald’s methodology and pedagogy of Storywork and by postcolonial perspectives on teacher education and children’s literature.

In this research, early childhood educators envision ways to aesthetically and politically care for and carry the storybooks with young children by co-attending to the worldviews they espouse. Storybooks are situated as political text interfering with Eurocentric mindsets that position children and their educators as apolitical, de-temporalized and place neutral subjects.

ABSTRACT. Straddling geopolitical, linguistic, and racial borders, a transnational educator, delves into the memories of six individuals whose childhood was caught up in the turmoil of a separationist movement in the Northern hills of India, during the 1980s. These memories are part of an ongoing exploration of the impact of the violent movement on the early childhood experiences of these individuals. Drawing on the Chicana/Latina feminist methodology of pláticas, each participant was engaged in deep conversations and critical self-examination of how early childhood memories and the remembering of these, connected to their current identities and the liminal spaces they occupy.

ABSTRACT. This presentation showcases the ethnic diversity found in preschool classrooms in Hawai’i and highlights a preschool teacher's efforts to create a safe and inclusive environment, particularly for marginalized children. The teacher employs puppetry as a means to achieve this goal, resulting in numerous successes. Through sharing these examples, we aim to inspire audiences to reconsider the effectiveness of puppetry in preschool settings and to engage them in discussions regarding culturally sensitive support for social-emotional development and asset-based perspectives among educators.

ABSTRACT. This session/paper describes a self study involving post secondary students and early childhood education professors at [name] University in western Canada. Using a duoethnographic research methodology, the participants critically discussed their observations of preschool children’s engagement in craftivism at a community childcare centre. Together the participants co-constructed knowledge about how the children came to understand homelessness through craft-making. Third wave feminist ideas related to craftivism (Chansky, 2010) and Fricker’s (2007) “epistemic injustice” provided a scholarly framework for the research. Through this study, the researchers aimed to advocate for children’s right to explore social issues through play, dialogue, and craftivism.

ABSTRACT. When children are afforded opportunities to immerse themselves in authentic, real-world situations, it nurtures the development of essential problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. However, early childhood spaces are becoming increasingly skills-based instead of providing contextualized experiences. The purpose of our study was to explore the ways children engage in writing as a form of advocacy within a STEM and justice-focused inquiry. Case study is used to unpack preschool children’s writing experiences. Findings indicate children engaged in disciplinary writing as a way to raise awareness of environmental issues and promote social action through their use of language and texts.

ABSTRACT. The panel introduces four research projects from the presenters’ organization as examples of research that are useful in supporting social justice for the early care and education (ECE) workforce. Presenters will share how the organization’s roots and orientation in social justice and activism shape the research process, including selection of topic areas and research questions, engagement with study participants, interpretation of results, and dissemination of research outputs. Participants will have opportunities to engage in small-group discussions aimed at expanding traditional ways of conducting research to enhance their utility, with the ultimate goal of supporting greater justice for the ECE workforce.

ABSTRACT. This panel addresses artistic and material pedagogies for 21st century childhoods that have been generated in response to inherited dominant structures of education that limit and constrict narratives of who children can be and become.

In each of our pedagogical practices, from Australia to Canada and the United States, we work to open spaces that cultivate complexity and dynamic ways of learning, centering relationality between children, artists, materials, and gallery spaces. We conceptualize these interactions as speculative becomings. We see materials as sites for worlding otherwise to generate collective knowledge production towards more just and livable futures.

ABSTRACT. The power of a dataset’s storyline or narrative in decision-making can significantly impact policies and resource allocation. This interactive workshop fosters critical thinking on interpreting data and unpacking the perspectives that shape the data narrative. Behind the statistics, and graphs, there is deeper context influenced by experiences, learned theories, biases, history, stories, etc. There are also significant omissions in data that can produce narratives that harm populations historically marginalized.

ABSTRACT. Three early childhood art education researchers consider how intersections of art and the body might coalesce to build new understandings or precipitate new practices, and to “(re)think justice in the face of everyday injustices”. Through a variety of methodologies based or contextualized within the arts, we consider how politics, practices, and ethics are made visible, enacted on, or performed through the body. In our attunement to the body, we consider how thinking with and through it and visual arts practices and contexts might create a more just understanding of early childhood education.

ABSTRACT. Using the processes of experimentation with the performative (Boldt and Valente, 2021), this re- presentation (Denzin, 2003) is part ethnographic reflection part performance examining the intersection of living in rurality and living queer in Northern Appalachia. I do this to hold the contradistinctions of the anti-genderqueer, white supremacist landscape, alongside changing, strengthening dynamics of family and community. Inspired by queer/trans storytelling traditions (e.g., Blaise & Taylor, 2012; Silin, 2017; Sullivan & Urraro, 2019), this presentation aims to highlight stories of changing times and place in rural communities, offering an alternate narrative to what is often portrayed in news and media.

ABSTRACT. Working from anarchist and abolitionist theories of mutual aid, in this paper presentation we discuss how collectivist constructions of mutuality can carry us out of the current care crisis. We begin by troubling the hegemonic tendencies of the market model of care, knowing that it is neither natural nor inevitable (Moss, 2009). Drawing from a rich history of grassroots mutual aid work, we explore how collective mutuality protects from systems that harm while also imagining liberatory futures. Finally, we share personal experiences from partners in a childcare collective in Detroit, Michigan to highlight lessons learned and possibilities for the future.

ABSTRACT. Strong home-school relationships have the potential to increase student achievement and well-being (Epstein et al., 2018; Jeynes, 2018). Considering the major cultural gap that exists between a predominantly white teaching force and an increasingly diverse student population (Radd et al., 2021), teachers will need to think past Eurocentric models of parental involvement and reflect on their own implicit biases in order to nurture the home-school connection. Using the Flores & Kyere (2020) model of parent engagement, participants will be prompted to explore asset-based approaches concerning parental engagement by reframing their responses to challenges in culturally responsive ways.

ABSTRACT. This themed panel session explores the imperative of diversifying early childhood teacher preparation programs through a critical feminist lens. Panelists address structural barriers and offer innovative solutions to support early childhood educators of Color in higher education. Through three distinct papers, the panelists propose strategies for humanizing and incorporating culturally sustaining learning experiences, challenging traditional discourse, and promoting justice-oriented teacher education. By centering lived experiences and amplifying marginalized voices, the panelists collectively resist systemic racism and discrimination within the early childhood profession. These approaches aim to create a more just and liberated future for all.