Call for Papers: Unbroken: (Re)Claiming Stories, Relationality, and Possibility

“Stories move us.
Stories move.

Through relation.
Through power.
Through rupture.
Through continuity.
Through becoming.
Through (re)becoming” (Steinke, 2026) *

*Melissa Steinke's notion of "Unbroken" first emerged during her final year as a graduate student at the University of British Columbia. Through exploring her family's funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), she was invited into and alongside storying with her father. What began as an exploration of her father’s experiences became an encounter with her own positionality and the realization that his story was also her story. These experiences later evolved into her graduate e-portfolio, Entwined, Entangled & Unbroken: Stories of an Undivided Self (Steinke, 2026), where Unbroken became a conceptual and pedagogical framework for thinking with stories, relationality, and possibility.

 

Inspired by Steinke (2026), this call begins with an understanding of the significance of stories in shaping our identities. Stories, as Jo-Ann Archibald (2008), Stó:lō educator and scholar, tells us, are deeply entwined - woven through relationships, histories, memories, and lived encounters. Within early childhood spaces, stories participate in how children come to understand themselves, others, belonging, and what past and futures are possible (Stremmel, 2014). Yet the ways children - and we may add - families, and educators experience relationships, pedagogy, ideas, knowledge, care, and learning are also shaped by systems of power (Esmonde & Booker, 2017). Thinking with Audre Simpson (2007), Mohawk scholar, Unbroken speaks to refusal: a refusal of systems and structures of power and oppression to silence, erase, or undo—a refusal of heteronormativity, marginalization, or pressures to conform.

Relatedly, Theressa Lenear (2023), a Black scholar and activist whose work engages issues of equity and social justice, writes:

In the stories are the histories of the people, their struggles and their triumphs, their resistance and their oppression, their battles won, and their battles lost.  Within their stories lie the answers to many of life’s questions.  Their journeys provide pathways to follow and pathways to avoid (p. 17). 

Unbroken does not deny rupture. Rather, it speaks to the ongoing work of sustaining and tending to stories, relationships, and possibilities. Ultimately, Unbroken reflects the belief that stories, and our collective potentialities, are not fixed, but can be re-told in ways that “suspend damage-centred narratives” (Tuck, 2009) and gesture toward the formation of different worlds (Simpson, 2017). It is within these entanglements that the concept of Unbroken emerged (Steinke, 2026).

This call seeks stories of “Unbroken-ness” - stories that claim space for silenced histories and marginalized systems of knowledge: amplifying lived experiences, and stories of resistance, persistence, brilliance, and joy. We welcome contributions that resist closure and instead honour the ongoing work of undoing, reimagining, and reclaiming. 

 

In keeping with this commitment to storying, we offer the following provocations as invitations to reflect, share, and (re)claim the stories that shape who we are and how we come to know:

•     What stories have shaped your understandings of your own identity, history, belonging to place and power?
•     What becomes possible when we listen beyond the narratives imposed upon us?
•     What does it mean to be Unbroken amid experiences of marginalization or exclusion within educational spaces?
•     What stories do children carry into early childhood spaces, and how are these stories honoured, silenced, resisted, or reshaped?
•     How do your stories, and the stories of your communities, carry joy, memory, resistance, resilience, and hope?
•     How might the conception of an unbroken-ness transform the ways we listen, relate, care, and learn alongside children and one another?

 

We invite submissions from those who are engaged in the lives and worlds of children, families, communities, and early childhood spaces. We encourage individual and collaborative, innovative, creative, and multimodal works that share situated stories and counter-stories of unbroken-ness. 

Submission and Publication Timeline:

• September 20, 2026: Abstract submission (300-500 words, excluding references). References may be shared as part of your submission. Email abstracts to ecestudentjournal@gmail.com
• October 18, 2026: Decisions on and/or suggestions for abstracts sent from the Editorial Collective.
• December 13, 2026: Submissions (up to 6,000 words or equivalent multimodal formats) uploaded directly to the journal submission portal. 
•  January - March 2027: Submission review process (including revisions).
• Spring/Summer 2027: Publication of the issue.

 

References 

Archibald, J. (2008). Indigenous Storywork: Educating the heart, mind, body, and spirit. UBC Press.

Esmonde, I. & Booker, A. (2017). Introduction. In I. Esmonde & A. N. Booker (Eds.), Power and privilege in the learning sciences: Critical and sociocultural theories of learning (pp. 1-5). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315685762

Lenear, L. (2023). Rooted. In A. Mwenelupembe (Ed.), Stories of resistance: Learning from Black women in early care and education (pp. 14-29). Exchange Press.

Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. htttp://doi.org/10.108/00405849209543534

Simpson, A. (2007). On ethnographic refusal: Indigeneity, ‘voice’ and colonial citizenship. Junctures: the journal for thematic dialogue, (9), 67-80. 

Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt77c 

Steinke, M. (2026). Entwined, entangled, & unbroken: Stories of an undivided self [Graduate e-portfolio]. https://steinkefamily20.wixsite.com/myundividedself

Stremmel, A. J. (2014, June). The power of narrative inquiry to transform both teacher and mentor. Voices of Practitioners, 9(1), 1-5.https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/globallyshared/Images/resources/pubs/the_power_of_narrative_inquiry_to_transform_both_te acher_and_mentor_commenary_on_goeson_andystremmel.pdf

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428.https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15