Encounters With Materials

This inquiry project was a book study with a focus on Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind, and Laurie Kocher (2017). This study invited a group of 5 early childhood educators into a discussion over 5 months. We situated ourselves with and through a post-humanist theory which removes human dominance from the center and instead, invites conditions where we can construct multiple understandings with materials. We investigated material relational perspectives both within early childhood centers and personal practices. This involved paying close attention to how materials let us affect and be affected. We disrupted the discourse of materials being seen as predictable instruments and became curious about how experimentation and dialogue can change our ways of thinking and engaging with materials. This inquiry began by dialoguing about the image of materials in early childhood spaces. These discussions lead us to inquire about who is the early childhood educator in relation to material encounters. As we dwelled with new ideas, we wondered about time, ecologies, and aesthetics. These ideas supported our process of meaning-making of how materials are an agentic force within our worldly encounters. We come to believe that we are not outside observers of the world and will continue to research how materials are active participants immersed in an already existing ecology of relationships.