Dead "Tadpoles" Discoveries Within Undecided Boundaries in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability Research

• In Event: AERA Virtual Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

What does it mean to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway, 2016) of death, environmental damage, and the muddle of the ‘common world’? How might educators and researchers find ways to appreciate and support practices within environmental and sustainability early childhood education that avoid simply externalizing human exceptionalism. Challenging philosophies of child-centredness and socio-constructivist learning theories, posthumanism helps disrupt the dominant discourse of the ‘agentic’ child as the sole purveyor of knowledge, responsible for both the precarity and salvation of the world. In its place, a posthumanism framing positions the ‘common world’ as one of entanglement and intra-activity among both the agentic human and more-than-human others.

Author

• Debra Harwood, Brock University