Encounters With Materials in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 117
  In Roundtable Session: Reflecting on Practice and Reflective Practice in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This paper examines and discusses non-traditional approaches to materiality in relation to learning in early childhood education. Materiality is conceptualized through literature from visual arts, feminist and science studies, and Deleuzian ontology. Our central questions are: What are materials capable of in the early childhood classroom? How does the relationality of materials with the social/cultural/discursive aspects reconceptualize learning in early childhood education? We draw on data generated in a critical visual ethnographic study working collaboratively with young children, educators, graduate students and researchers. The study develops an understanding of the complexities of relationality between matter and social/cultural realms of learning, and shows how this has allowed us to move beyond the binaries of mind/body, interior/exterior, subject/object and nature/culture.

Authors

• Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Victoria

• Sylvia C. Kind, The University of British Columbia

• Laurie Kocher, Douglas College