Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, co-founder of the Common Worlds Research Collective, in conversation with pedagogists Teresa Smith and Narda Nelson discussed and asked: Why take a common worlding approach in early childhood? What happens when we shift the focus of practice from universalized notions of ‘the developmental child’ to the complex entangled, mutually affecting, and co-shaping child-world relations? Sharing moments from children and educators’ thinking with wet lands and the cosmos, Teresa and Narda offered insights into challenges and possibilities that emerge in working with a common worlding framework and methods.

Teresa Smith is an ECPN Pedagogist in Kamloops. Teresa aims to cultivate collaborative relationships with educators, families, children and her pedagogist colleagues, to think otherwise about children and childcare, and to co-build a community where all children can flourish.

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, ECPN Co-Director, is a Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Curriculum at Western University in Ontario, Canada. Her writing and research contribute to the Common Worlds Research Collective (tracing children’s relations with places, materials and other species) and the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory (experimenting with the contours, conditions and complexities of 21st-century pedagogies).

Narda Nelson is a Pedagogist with the University of Victoria Child Care Services. Drawing on her background in gender studies, Narda takes an interdisciplinary approach to early childhood with a particular focus on reimagining ethical futures with plant, animal, & waste flow relations in early childhood. She is a PhD student with Western University’s Faculty of Education & Common Worlds Research Collective member.