bell hooksian love: Enacting Power Sharing as an ECE Praxis of Unlearning

Authors

  • Dr. Nidhi Menon University of New Brunswick
  • Maria Karmiris Toronto Metropolitan University

Abstract

This paper reimagines early childhood education and care (ECEC) through the radical lens of bell hooksian love. In a global climate shaped by violence, displacement, and neoliberal policies, children from refugee, immigrant, and multiply marginalized communities often experience exclusion within deficit-oriented and developmentalist frameworks. Drawing on the work of bell hooks and our lived experiences as educators and researchers, we position love not as sentimentality but as a political and methodological commitment to justice, care, and relationality. Love becomes a counter-story to neoliberalism’s emphasis on individualism and standardization, creating space for belonging, solidarity, and transformation in ECEC. Through vignettes from our professional and research practice, we illustrate how love can function as both praxis and pedagogy, by centering children’s lived experiences, knowledges, and potentialities. Ultimately, we argue that enacting love in ECEC offers a pathway toward power-sharing, collective healing, and radical hope.

Author Biographies

Dr. Nidhi Menon, University of New Brunswick

Dr. Nidhi Menon is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick. She earned her PhD in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. Her scholarship and advocacy are grounded in post-structural and marginalized feminist ontologies, ethics of care, and critical analyses of power in Early Childhood Studies. Dr. Menon works closely with young refugee children, their families, and educators from refugee backgrounds, centering their experiences in both research and practice. Her work is committed to making visible the voices, knowledge, and everyday lives of those who are too often devalued or erased in dominant discourses and systems. She draws on the perspectives of women of colour to interrogate normative constructions of childhood and to work collectively toward equity in a society that routinely marginalizes these communities.

Maria Karmiris, Toronto Metropolitan University

Maria Karmiris is a sessional lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University and at the University of Toronto. She also currently teaches in an elementary school at the Toronto District School Board. Her research interests involve critically examining practices of conditional inclusion or outright exclusion for children with disabilities. 

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Published

2026-03-22

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 2 (2025): Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education: Turning to Hope, Making Sanctuaries, Janice Kroeger and Iris Berger (Eds.)

Section

Special Issue: Reconceptualizing ECE--Turning to Hope, Making Sanctuary

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