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pedagogist intimacy materials curriculum pedagogy

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Materials in Early Childhood Education

The term materials in early childhood education has several meanings. We might think of materials as documents and articles, as in teaching materials or published materials. We also use the word material as an adjective, as in introducing children to the material world. And we might speak of materials as things that live in the classroom.

In this post, we reflect on how early childhood education might ponder the things (materials) that make the early childhood classroom. We are not the first ones to speak about this topic. In the 1840s, Friedrich Froebel “devised a system of toys and other educative materials known as the Gifts and Occupations” (Brehony, 2013, p. 60), thus highlighting the importance of materials in education. As early childhood education grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so too did the creation didactic materials and philosophies related to them (e.g., Maria Montessori, Rudolph Steiner). Decades later, taking a different perspective, Loris Malaguzzi referred to the environment as a third teacher, emphasizing the importance of thinking about the materials in a classroom. Malaguzzi’s phrase still resonates with many educators.

At the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network, we pay careful attention to materials. Inspired by contemporary theories on materiality, we have redefined how we think of materials. Materials are active, agentic and lively. This does not mean that materials act in the same way that humans (children, educators, pedagogists) act. That is, materials do not have “human agency.” Their agency lays in their capacity to move us, make us think, affect us. In Encounters with Materials, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind and Laurie Kocher (2017) ask:

What if humans’ role in shaping materials is not as central as we believe? What if materials shape us as much as we shape them? What if we pay attention to the effects of things and to how things move together, not asking what an object or a thing or a material is, but what does a material do? (p. 2)

Thus, when it comes to materials, pedagogists work with early childhood educators in unique ways (see Encounters with Materials). Pedagogists attend to what materials do in the classroom—how they move, their flows and rhythms, their forces and relations, how they respond to touch, how they invite children to act in certain ways and not others. Pedagogists also pay attention to materials’ temporality. For instance, they might wonder how to inherit materials such as plastics, which carry complex histories and troubling futures. Pedagogists are often concerned with how children might learn to care differently for materials, for example, how to support children to slow down and attend to materials as part of the web of life rather than as resources to be used for humans’ benefit.

To imagine what these modes of practice might entail, we offer a moment in an early childhood education classroom where paper’s movements and inclinations invite children to act:

The studio is filled with newspaper strips. Some are in bins, some are stuffed into large, freestanding clear acrylic tubes, and countless others lie scattered on the floor. Kale is sitting on the floor near a shallow container of papier-mâché liquid. He picks up a single paper strip and dips it into the liquid. The paper initially floats, then becomes receptive to the liquid, and soon feels slippery to the touch. The longer it remains in the liquid the slimier it becomes. As Kale’s fingers meet paper and paper meets liquid, something is suggested. Kale tests out this alchemy as he drapes one strip over his leg and momentarily pauses. It seems to feel pleasant to him. Impulsively he covers his leg with more soaked strips in a fluid movement between fingers, paper strip, liquid, and leg. The paper is slippery, cold, on his skin, and it soon draws other children and educators around to watch what is happening. Before long, other hands dip the paper in the liquid, pass the strips to Kale, and join in his experimentation. (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017, p. 27)

At the ECPN, we are now engaging in conversations about these modes of practice through a mini-course offered to early childhood educators across British Columbia (see the BC Early Years Professional Development Hub). In Waste-As Material: Reimagining the ECE Classroom, we invite educators to rethink children’s relations with materials. More specifically, the course addresses the important issue of waste materials. We provide a space for educators to think about how they might bring materials into sight and into mind to refigure children’s relations with waste materials.