I have been finding ways to apply different understandings I have gained from this program particularly about dominant discourses in education and early childhood education, prompting me to re-think and engage with others in dialogue about what education is for (Biesta, 2012). I am striving to create space for thought and conversation about differences to- and diversions from the prescribed and pre-conceived collection of knowledge of children that I have inherited and that continue to pervade teacher training curriculum and define theory and practice in this field.

 

I am looking for new questions, movements, openings and foreclosures (Vintimilla & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2020) that could interfere with, shift and move ECE toward a place of possibilities where early childhood educators see themselves as “researchers and critical thinkers…beyond those who apply theories and policies developed somewhere else” (Berger, 2015, p.134).  I am thinking with questions such as: How might we re-imagine the child? How might we think of pedagogy (Vintimilla & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2020)? How might we enact and encourage leadership in early childhood education? How might we create “vibrant public conversations about pedagogical projects and processes that matter to early childhood communities” (ECPN, 2021)? And what might emerge from these encounters (Moss, 2014)?

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Through my journey in this program and the ideas and experiences that have been generated in the context of the conditions of the world right now, I am understanding differently how the answers to these questions must be created by the human and more-than-human contributors situated in the particular places and times in which the questions are asked. I have gained confidence and capacity to push for changes in my college ECE department, and I am excited to continue thinking through difference in my new role as a faculty pedagogist working with the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network in British Columbia. I am committed to advocating for and contributing to changes to  curriculum by “transforming structures and habits in early childhood [teacher] education that are rooted in developmentalism and other Euro-Western dominant discourses” (ECPN, 2021). I am striving to enact diffractive practice that will move post-secondary pedagogical commitments into alignment with ideas we think with in early learning environments, as articulated in the British Columbia Early Learning Framework  (Province of BC, 2019). These include critical reflection, collaborative dialogue and situated, responsive pedagogies. My learning from the content and conversations in this MEd program have helped me to transform my own classroom into a place for constructive interference: a space where we collectively critique the taken-for-granted, where we seek out and honour ancient, new and diverse ways of knowing, and where we create different ways of thinking about early childhood education.

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Perhaps the greatest learning I am taking away from my experience through this Masters degree, through this pandemic-altered world, is a greater sense of ease (or at least a lesser sense of dis-ease) in moments of not-knowing, as I am finding myself looking instead at these moments of tension and difference instead as opportunities for thinking (Berger, 2017). I am learning to release my need or desire for control, for mastery, for knowing, and I am inspired to create ever-new ways of being as my self and surroundings continue to move and change.

I am excited to continue thinking with the idea of diffraction as a methodology to observe and attend to “where interference patterns make a difference in how meanings are made and lived” (Haraway, 1997, p. 14).

 

I am grateful for the many teachers with whom I have had the privilege of learning on my journey in this program, including the diverse and profoundly generous group of peers I have come to know in this cohort. 

I am particulary grateful for the encouragement of Dr. Iris Berger, who pushed me to notice and attend to ripples in discourse in the field of early childhood education, and helped me to find the confidence to make my own ripples through the contributions I am making to conversations in my own contexts.

I am eternally grateful to my children and my husband, for being their authentic selves, challenging my assumptions, and inspiring me to re-imagine what education could be.

Finally, I dedicate this graduating project to my late mother, Lynn, for instilling in me a deep love and profound respect for children, for difference, for learning, and inspiring me to take every opportunity to make waves.