Keywords

pedagogist provoking curriculum developmentalism

Share This Page

Provoking

This blog post is the third in a series of posts that share insights derived from the presentation “Storying With” offered by ECPN community pedagogists Tracy Barkman, Mary Kim, Rachel Phillips and Karen Rodden at the 2023 Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC) conference Power of Story. At the conference, pedagogists shared stories and documentation from their work with educators and children to highlight how pedagogical work takes up the concept of story in multiple and diverse ways.

Pedagogists design and nurture, within local contexts, pedagogical projects that are deeply responsive to the conditions of our times. These projects are situated in communities’ social, political, cultural, linguistic and material lifeworlds and are designed through a deep engagement with the process of pedagogical narration. Through this dialogical curriculum-making process, pedagogists work to create spaces for educators and children to consider how to live well together (Vintimilla & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2017). Embedded in the role of the pedagogist is a commitment to transforming structures and habits in early childhood education that are rooted in developmentalism and other Euro-Western dominant discourses. Pedagogists strive to generate pedagogies that promote livable futures.

This post, like the previous and upcoming ones, addresses specific conditions in the 21^st-century lives of children. Each of these four blog posts centres on a concept from the “Storying With” presentation. These concepts are intentionality, situatedness, provoking, and contamination. This third post focuses on provoking, a crucial aspect of the work of the ECPN pedagogist. Pedagogists aim to disrupt the status quo in early childhood education by asking questions that provoke intentionality and thoughtful consideration of daily practices. These questions encourage us to reflect on why we do what we do in early childhood education and to consider important ethical questions, such as how we might live well together, which we discussed in our first post about intentionality.

The questions a pedagogist poses are often unfamiliar in early childhood programs because they focus on creating subjects and worlds rather than solely on children’s individual development. Although these questions might be unaccustomed in early childhood settings, they are not confrontational. Instead judging individual programs or educators, they are meant to prompt consideration of early childhood practices beyond dominant developmental theory. Provoking questions open pedagogical spaces to slow down and think differently. Thinking differently involves reimagining early childhood practices and the world outside of the status quo or our usual ways of operating, allowing us to envision what might be possible in early childhood education when we are not constrained by concerns about individual child development. In this way, provoking is not a negative occurrence but a method of creating new, more livable approaches to early childhood education.

During her presentation at the conference, Mary, a pedagogist working with educators in Burnaby and New Westminster, shared how she carefully considers the specific contexts of her work. Mary noted that, except for one, all the educators she works with have immigrated to Canada. Recognizing the dominant discourses that centre whiteness in early childhood education, Mary is committed to thinking with educators and their lived experiences to imagine new possibilities for embracing diversity in the programs she supports. She aimed to challenge deficit perspectives that view knowledge about children and childhoods from outside Canadian contexts as a negative attribute needing correction. Mary knew that the diverse perspectives these educators brought to their work should be celebrated rather than diminished by universal teaching practices. In essence, Mary sought to create spaces where educators could incorporate their lived experiences and varied knowledge about children and childhoods into their work rather than adhering to practices that promote sameness and conformity.

In her presentation, Mary highlighted the irony in privileging Euro-Western, white, masculinist ways of knowing and being in early childhood education, especially since she primarily works with women who have immigrated to Canada from non-Euro-Western regions. She explained how these dominant discourses often silence individual educators’ histories and lived experiences by framing curriculum goals around developmental constructions of best practices. Over the past three years, Mary has committed to challenging the notion of a singular truth in early childhood education—the truth of developmental psychology, which is based on white, colonial ways of knowing and being (Burman, 2017; Cannella & Viruru, 2004; Nxumalo, 2015, 2016).

While collaborating with Emma, another ECPN pedagogist, Mary began to explore which concepts she could bring to her work to foster diverse perspectives. She thought critically about the idea of interruption. Like provocation, interruption is often viewed negatively. However, both concepts, when activated in early childhood settings, can disrupt the status quo of everyday practices. Mary and Emma reframe interruption as a means to challenge conventional early childhood practices by creating spaces for knowledge outside Euro-Western perspectives to influence curriculum making. They suggest that by interrupting these norms, educators are encouraged to incorporate their own histories into their work rather than relying on dominant Euro-Western cultural expectations or focusing exclusively on the children’s development. Through sharing stories from her work with educators at the conference, Mary illustrated how she has activated the concept of interruption through various pedagogical provocations. One such provocation involves rethinking language and unsettling the idea that there is only one way to understand a concept. Thinking carefully about what the language we use in early childhood education produces opens up possibilities for new ways of thinking and understanding and for challenging the status quo.

Pedagogists provoke educators to think differently, interrupting their routinized ways of practicing and theorizing early childhood education by bringing ideas beyond dominant Euro-Western developmental theories to early years programs. Putting ideas from various cultures into conversation with some of the concepts that are taken for granted in the construction of early childhood education in Canada, such as care and language, provokes pedagogists and educators to craft new questions in curriculum making. These questions concern what types of worlds we want to create with children rather than how we measure children’s individual achievement. At the conference, Mary shared that to foster a deep, collective engagement with the concept and practice of provoking through interruption, she and Emma invited the educators they work with to a Culture Crawl on the east side of Vancouver. The Culture Crawl is an annual invitation for the public to walk into the various art studios and meet with the artists on site. Mary and Emma envisioned this encounter as an entry point for thinking about how early childhood practices might be nourished with ideas from outside dominant developmental theory. They hoped this experience would nourish attention to the condition/idea/situation of being affected by art. The arts have the potential to teach us about alternative ways of living and thinking in this world together and to interrupt our normalized ways of seeing the world. In their discussion with educators about the experience of the Culture Crawl, Mary and Emma emphasized the commitment to think early childhood education outside of the dominance of child development theories and to provoke educators and children to notice other ways of knowing that are present but often overlooked or neglected.

Despite a commitment to rethinking conventional ways of understanding and living in this world, welcoming difference in collective work is challenging. The mere presence of a pedagogist does not provoke changes in current early childhood practices. Pedagogists often encounter resistance due to educators’ unfamiliarity with addressing generative pedagogical problems or discomfort with uncertainty. However, Mary demonstrated how, through intentional choices, she has been creating moments that prompt rethinking the inherited ideas about education and their influence in the classroom.

In the presentation, pedagogists shared many stories of provoking, not as a simple replacement of old ideas and practices nor as an endorsement that anything new or different is inherently better. Instead, dwelling in interruptions involves defamiliarizing “normal” or status quo ways of being in the world, allowing us to see things in a new light and discover possible new ways of doing education. In these interrupted spaces, educators are seen as vibrant thinkers, not merely as caretakers. Mary’s stories illustrate her belief that unfamiliar objects, spaces, people or materials are essential to the creativity that helps us to build worlds together. Through her example of the Culture Crawl, Mary highlighted the pleasure and joy that rethinking can bring.

Being provoked can be uncomfortable, but leaning into this discomfort can lead to surprise and delight in the unexpected. The space created by provocation and intentional interruption fosters hospitality toward an unknown future, enabling new possibilities. However, we must stop glamorizing smooth, uneventful days to realize this. It is not despite the challenges of the unknown but because of them that we can think and live differently. The work of a pedagogist is to provoke small moments of the unknown, finding cracks where change can occur. While interrupting or provoking someone is often seen as negative, reimagined, it interferes with status quo trajectories to meet, create and act differently.