Stop "Under-mind-ing" Early Childhood Educators: Critically Engaging Subjectivity in Preservice Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Twelve
  In Roundtable Session: Equity and Rights: Dispositions, Ethics, and Professional Responsibilities (Table 8)

Abstract

In this paper, we disrupt the ‘truth’ of objectivity taught to students in curriculum courses and field practicum in early childhood pre-service education in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We contend that objectivity not only silences critical conversations by positioning theory as neutral in its relation to practice, but it also underestimates and ‘under-minds’ students’ intellectual capacity. Instead, we argue for a critical engagement with subjectivity and its complexities to build students’ intellectual and relational capacities. Drawing on critical educational perspectives and our own practice as a professor and a field liaison, we work to recover subjectivity in the context of early childhood pre-service education, identify conceptual barriers we have encountered in our work, and propose potentially generative conditions for pre-service programs.

Authors

• Kimberly Bezaire, Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Kathleen Johnston, York University
  Presenting Author