Doing pedagogical intentions withFacetiming Common Worlds(and Donna Haraway)

Abstract

Working with stories of children’s relationships with place and technologies from an early childhood education pedagogical inquiry research project in Melbourne, Australia and Victoria, Canada, this article takes up the concept of “pedagogical intentions” to consider how educators and researchers might cultivate intentional teaching practices relevant to the complex worlds we inherit with children. We think with a common worlds pedagogies approach to extend conceptualizations of intentional teaching held in dominant Euro-Western early learning frameworks in Melbourne and Victoria. After situating our understanding of pedagogical intentionality as an ongoing, purposeful, answerable practice of shaping and caring with everyday pedagogical relationships, we share three stories of how we activate our Donna Haraway–inspired intentions with children. By questioning how our pedagogical intentions inform our work, we assert that sharing and putting at risk our intentions is a necessary practice for thinking collectively with children, more-than-human others, and technologies within early childhood education.