Call for Papers: Transformation through Participation: Early Childhood Education Students as Change Agents 

Call for Papers: Transformation through Participation: Early Childhood Education Students as Change Agents 

 

“Academia and activism should co-exist” ~ Dr. Cindy Blackstock 

For this first issue of the journal: Potentia: Activating Change in Early Childhood Education, we are inspired by Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic/activists who challenge academia to be/come more than a space for knowledge transmission. At a recent public talk, Dr. Cindy Blackstock (2023) Gitxsan First Nation, activist for child welfare, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, contested the passivity of academic knowledge production and called on scholars and academics to partner with community members to act in response to the knowledge that has been produced for the possibility of co-creating better futures. 

The feminist scholar Rosi Braidotti (2017) promotes an approach to knowledge that is simultaneously critical and creative. Braidotti, whose work inspired the title for this journal, argues for a “politically informed reading of the present that aims at exposing power both as entrapment (potestas) and as empowerment (potentia) in the production of knowledge” (p. 84). For Braidotti (2016), transformation lies in the possibility to ‘think against one’s times, in spite of the times and out of concern for one’s times.’ As a student-led journal, we are interested in creating a platform for vibrant conversation about the role of the university and academia in ‘thinking against one’s times’ and in response to issues and concerns of our contemporaneity. To this end, this journal aims to articulate a broad range of experiences of being a student and engaging with matters of concerns in early childhood education (ECE). We want to break out from conventional academic discourses and practices (potestas) and amplify creative responses and propositions (potentia) that aim at transforming ECE.

For students, publishing can often be seen as an academic practice that seems out of reach, however; we recall Barbara Rogoff’s (1997) contention that learning and becoming occur through participation. Sara Ahmed (2017) posits that we learn about worlds in our efforts to transform them. Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) (Potawatomi Nation) writes that “transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge” (p. 89). Rather, we must engage with the environments we hope to transform, changing and being changed by them in a reciprocal process. Bronwyn Davies (2017) reminds us that transformations can be modest and “are usually of a molecular kind…finding the movement possible within them” (p. 69). In this spirit, we are offering this special issue as a platform for students’ participation in transforming public debates about what early childhood education is and what it might be about. We wish to create a space where diverse participants co-respond to knowledge production, problematizing taken-for-granted practices, and reimagine and co-create new ways of thinking, being and doing ECE. 

We are seeking contributions from current and recently graduated students who position their academic and professional work as gesturing towards different or alternative possibilities beyond the status quo, in which ECE has become mired. We invite students to expose their activism potential through making public their transformative aspirations. We remain curious to learn What might be transformed when ECE students participate in activities such as journal publication?

Topics:

• How has the experience of being an ECE student ignited a desire for change and transformation?  

• What does it mean to be a student in early childhood education in our current time?
• What pedagogical approaches and contexts afford transformative thinking and doing?
• What broad political, social and cultural supports are needed for transforming ECE? 
• What are ways for students and professionals to engage as activists and leaders? 

 

Format of Submissions:

We invite various styles of writing for this issue, and encourage creative interpretations of the topic. Student papers that have been previously written for course assignments and which meet the submission criteria are welcome. Submissions formats might include:

 

1. Narrative and other personal essays which articulate an individual’s experiences and perspectives on transformation.
2. Empirical or conceptual manuscripts of academic research.
3. Creative work in the form of art and/or poetry.

 

Manuscripts Due: April 5, 2024

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373377

Blackstock, C. (Feb 20, 2023). Finding oxygen for the misfit academic: Why academia and activism should co-exist. SSHRC In Conversation With: Public talks with Canada’s leading social sciences and humanities scholars https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/society-societe/icw-ca/index-eng.aspx 

Braidotti, R. (2016). Don’t Agonize; Organize!. E-flux conversations.

Braidotti. R. (2017) Critical Posthuman Knowledges. South Atlantic Quarterly 116 (1): 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3749337

Davies, B. (2017). The entangled enlivening of being: Feminist research strategies in the early years. In K., Smith, Alexander, K., & Campbell, S. (Eds.). Feminism (s) in early childhood (pp. 65-74). Springer, Singapore. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-3057-4_6

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants (First). Milkweed Editions.

Rogoff, B. (1997). Evaluating development in the process of participation: Theory, methods, and practice building on each other . In E. Amsel, K. A. Renninger, & A. Renninger (Eds.), Change and Development (1st ed., pp. 1–310). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203774038