Sustaining Agency Across Social Contexts: How Young Children and their Communities are Reclaiming Agency

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session explores how multiply-marginalized young children and their communities sustain agency amid autocratic threats. We present findings from four contexts: a Cherokee tribal early childhood center practicing agency as mutual responsibility; a Jewish Reggio-inspired preschool demonstrating mediated empowerment within cultural boundaries; disabled children of color in a restrictive charter school reclaiming agency through subversive resistance; and Latinx children creatively demonstrating agency in a public school. Each paper spotlights brilliant agentic acts that refuse authoritarian erasure. Our session creates space for presenters and participants to collectively envision what an intersectionally liberatory early childhood education could be. We advance the 2026 AERA theme by building on histories of resistance to construct hopeful futures and sustainable agency for multiply-marginalized communities across contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University

Papers

• “So You Know You're Not Alone”: Mutual Responsibility Among Children and Adults on Tribal Land - Jennifer Keys Adair, The University of Texas at Austin; Monica Alonzo, University of Texas at Austin

• Sacred Boundaries, Structured Agency: Reframing Inquiry in a Jewish Reggio-Inspired Classroom - Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University; Molly E. McManus, San Francisco State University

• “Uh-Uh, I don’t go for that!” Young Disabled Children of Color Subverting Schooling’s Carceral Logics - Soyoung Park, Bank Street College of Education; Natacha Ndabahagamye Jones, University of North Texas

• Young Children of Color’s Agency and Creativity as Pathways to Imagining New Visions and Futures - Sunmin Lee, Texas State University; Kiyomi Sanchez-Suzuki Colegrove, Texas State University; Amber T. Fowler, University of Texas at Austin

Session Organizer

• Soyoung Park, Bank Street College of Education

Discussant

• Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University