Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education: Turning to Hope,Making Sanctuary Janice Kroeger & Iris Berger, Coeditors
Call for Abstracts for The International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal
Collection foci:
Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education: Turning to Hope,Making
Sanctuary
Janice Kroeger & Iris Berger
To figure out how, with each other, we can open up possibilities
for what can still be...we can’t do that in a negative mood. We
can’t do that if we do nothing but critique. We need critique; we
absolutely need it. But it’s not going to open up the sense of what
might yet be. It’s not going to open up the sense of that which is
not yet possible but profoundly needed.
~Donna J. Haraway
“Where there is hope, there is difficulty” ~ Sara Ahmed
Janice Kroeger, acknowledges the lake Erie watershed, the stolen lands upon which she
currently lives and works as the ancestral home of the Lenape,Cayuga, and the
Tuscarawas people, as well as many others across time, including the Mingo,
Kickapoo, Shawnee, Erie, and on...
Iris Berger, acknowledges the land on which her study and work take place as the
unceded (not surrendered) territory of the Musqueampeople who have lived in the
Fraser River estuary, including much of Vancouver, for thousands of years.
In this special issue we seek to ‘open up possibilities for what can still be’ while
recognizing the enormity of worldly issues facing early childhood educators, children,
and families. The geo-politics of late capitalism, including wars, migration, pollution,
extreme weather events, and the persistent effects of colonialism have created a
precarious future for childhoods and the ‘earthly communities of life’ (Abram, 2020).As
we learn ‘to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth’
(Haraway, 2016),we, in this volume/collection, acknowledge grief and despondency,
while turning tohope(and reconciliation(s)) as a speculative gesture to the possibility
that things can be otherwise. We ask how might we do early childhood education in the
messiness (and tragedies) of this moment? We highlight movements,doings and
undoings,which reconcile justicewith childhood in its entanglement with the world by
collectively (re)thinking, (re)configuring and (re)conceptualizing early childhood
educationnow, a time of heavy childhoods, without dragging children through the
muck.
Even within rampant consumerism and divisive politics which ultimately shape and
contour the practices of educators and opportunities for young children, we are curious
about (enlivened by) how others are seeing-and-doing-hope filled-encounters with
children in and outside classrooms. In this collection, we grapple with presence, staying
present with “the trouble” and not-yet-known futures for justice (or making spaces for
justice-yet-to-come). What would acting from where we are be when hope wrestles with
despair? Hope in this sense is not naive but anactivestance,a doing… a hope “that
enacts the stand” of the assemblage which “actively struggles against the evidence in
order to change the deadly tides” (West, 1997; 2011). Hope is alsohowconceptual and
pedagogic come together addressing a seeing-beyond the “consequences of
neoliberalism” in ethical and inclusive spaces (Iorio, Parnell, Quintero & Hamm,p. 300,
in Bloch, Swadener & Cannella, 2018).
Post-human thinking concedes to the discursive and material violences impacting the
lives of diverse people, often seeing those at the most marginal positions receiving the
brunt of nation state failures (as terrified and terrorized immigrants, indigenous
peoples, refugees, language minority groups, gender-diverse/queer and other
undervalued groups). Yet, we witnessed educators “making sanctuary” (Akomloafe,
2019) even within the injustices of structural and contributory constraints or the
totalizing ways that we encounter post-human concerns. We strive for capacity in our
thinking to engage hope(full), care(full), and mind(full) practice in early education,
recognizing post-human capacities for answerability even while understanding and
appreciating the multiple and often competing demands imposed within the
standardized time-space of educators and researchers lives and work (Kroeger & Widrig,
2023).
In this volume we take a decree of hope, selecting authors and contributors who
think/value:
Thinking beyond nationalism(s) and how this kind of thinking (with place) is
related to hope in terms of healing, reconciling purposes (within/out) of
colonized statuses (Kroeger & Widrig, 2023)
Indigenous education, with actors who rekindle, revitalize, and relearn/invent
wise pre-modernand post-modernways of doing and being to educate in a post-
anthropocentric childhood(Simpson, 2014; Todd, 2016).
Nature, land based, andoutdoor early educationalapproacheswhichare
revitalizing habitats in-and-out-of-classroom spaceswith inquiryopportunities
that reject/accept/reconcilepost-consumerism,griefs, or the manufactured crisis
of early school readiness.
Demonstrating hope in the fact(s) of rightwing conservatism that attempts to
rearrange the world in ways that omit (villainize) rather than honor the perspectives of children in/as undervalued
categories (emergent translinguists, non-verbal and differently-(dis)abled children, gender-diverse children)
Hope that is above, below, and with/in either the individual or the notions of
afterlife (indigenous ideas suggest that the afterlife is to be striven for and
understood in relation to the present/presence)....
Existing with a slowness, even stillness-awareness of post-activism (Akomloafe,
2020) while “making sanctuary”-thinking beyond the walls and wars, finding
the cracks-“disrupting the exclusivity of human agency”-to witness an opening
to a world that is livable for our children, ourselves, and our multi-species kin
(Haraway, 2008).
Please be in touch with jkroege1@kent.edu or iris.berger@ubc.ca (guest editors) if you
would like to contribute to or be considered for this collection in the International
Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal
Key Dates:
February 21th, 2025 (Note--extension of one week) ;Please submit an abstract and summary or outline totaling 500 words
March 1, 2025; Abstract feedback (Note: acceptance of abstract does not guarantee
submission acceptance)
May 1,2025; Full article submission, up to 6000 words (send to Janice Kroeger & Iris for
1st round comments, suggestions/revisions)
June 5, 2025;Authors receive feedback for the first draft
July15,2025; Full Paper Submissions to ICCPSJ for Anonymous Reviews
September 15, 2025; Final revisions, notifications
October 15, 2025; Paper resubmissions (if necessary)
November 15, 2025; Notification of Acceptance
Late Fall 2025; Publication of special issue
References
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Akomloafe, B. (2019, March 15).Making Sanctuary: Hope, Companionship, Race and
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https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/making-sanctuary-hope-companionship-race-
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Akomloafe, B. (2020, November 13).What I Mean By Postactivism. Blog post.
https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/what-i-mean-by-postactivism
Abram, D. (2020). In the ground of our unknowing.Emergence Magazine,7.
https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/in-the-ground-of-our-unknowing/
Haraway, J. Donna (2008). When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press.
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Iorio, J. M., Parnell, W. Quintero,E. P. & Hamm, C. (2018). Early Childhood Teacher
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