Ready or not, here they come! Care as a material and organizational practice in ECEC for children under two

Abstract

Caring relationships between children and educators in early childhood education and care centers become in an array of entanglements with spaces, materials, and the organization of time. An exclusively dyadic understanding of care is insufficient in the material, institutional, pedagogic, and professional environment of early childhood education and care. This article reports on an ethnographic study of material and organizational professional care practices in a high-functioning full-day early childhood education and care center for children less than 3 years in Norway. Drawing on Tronto and Fisher’s feminist care ethics and a posthuman perspective, the study’s aim was to gain knowledge about how early childhood educators perform care as a professional practice beyond the dyad. The article explores care through the lens of a disruption in daily activities, when the laying down of new flooring in the center produced changes in the otherwise highly functioning caring environment. Changes in the availability of materials and the organization of space and time are analyzed using Malabou’s concept of plasticity. The effects of the agentic force of material changes on the caring practices of the center, despite the already strong and established dyadic relationships between the children and educators, are discussed.