Pedagogies of liberation in early childhood: diffractive documentation practices on more-than-human and human movements

Abstract

Purpose

This research demonstrates diffractive documentation and practice as hopeful mechanisms in which early childhood educator-protagonists are proactive rather than reactive in their work with young children.

Design/methodology/approach

Our storying research process is a narrative-building approach, whereby we interrelate and diffract together to seek out new meaning and understandings and promote social justice-oriented actions.

Findings

Authors each share from burgeoning narratives to interrelate and show a collection of threads that deepen multiple meanings in our existence.

Social implications

If we can assure deep support for all and an ethos of planet and place-caring, stretching beyond the status quo to children and place, then policies and practices can be changed for a greater good.

Originality/value

Humbly, we maintain that first, if we listen with children and the more-than-human, they show empathy, creativity and generative learning, and through our diffractive (re)storying process, hope is found, producing actions and movements.

Citation

Parnell, W., Molloy Murphy, A., Quintero, E. and Callaway-Cole, L. (2024), "Pedagogies of liberation in early childhood: diffractive documentation practices on more-than-human and human movements", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-04-2024-0090