Pedagogies of Liberation: Diffractive Documentation Practices on More-Than-Human and Human Movements

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Perspectives in Early Childhood Practice: Rethinking Documentation, Assessment, and Performance

Abstract

We wonder what we can do right now as liberatory education researchers who seek to support children, families, teachers and place in turbulent times? We think to diffractive practice as generative and hopeful mechanisms in which early childhood protagonists weave relational webs, re-creating lines of connection with ethico-political response-ability. Refractive documentation attends to entanglements of co-researchers (children, worms, Tanner Springs, families, teachers, teacher educators and so on) who are living in precariousness. Our diffracted documentation stories provide insights on casting a new pedagogical gaze, engaging differing perspectives. Making shifts from "learning about," “looking at,” and “listening to” --approaches rooted in human exceptionalism--to "learning-looking-listening with" creates space for practicing care as transformative life-force carrying vital material implications.

Authors

• Will Parnell, Portland State University

• Elizabeth P. Quintero, California State University - Channel Islands

• Angela Molloy-Murphy, Portland State University