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Critical reflection-role of pedagogist in early childhood education research:

A seed to act differently.

Catherine Leon Godoy.

University of Western Ontario

EDUC9429A-650: Research in Early Childhood Education Pedagogy

Dr. Kelly-Ann MacAlpine

Due December 11th, 2022

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A seed to act differently

In the following paper, I will discuss the impact that collective research has on my

current practice, especially regarding my role as an educator and the tensions that the

invitations to dialogue I propose to my community have generated. I will do this by reflecting

on my experience in these late times and the literature from our course.

The paper is divided into two parts. First, it will cover how my view of research through time

has changed and the importance of my role in it. I will also discuss how collective research

has impacted my practice and the tensions this has generated in my community. In the second

part, I will focus on pedagogical documentation and curriculum-making, discussing how I

engage with collective research and the path I have taken when interconnecting both.

The desire of think differently

When I started reading about collective research, I had a different idea than the one I

have now. Immersed in a country where research for education is mainly guided by

appropriate practices and measurements, searching for "what works" (Biesta, 2020), I thought

of research as a tool to prove and determine whether we are on the right track when working

with early years. Research was a way of finding truths that can be collected and used for

better practices and, thus, a successful education program. So when first reading about

collective research, I thought about the "corporate discourse of collaboration" (Vintimilla &

Berger, 2019, p. 189) where the dialogue should be free of conflicts, searching for a unique,

observable truth. I could be embarrassed about this first idea, but then it helped me move

forward because I did have things to say, which most times were out of the acceptable, out of

the "politics of niceness" (Vintimilla & Berger, 2019, p. 189). So I came to the readings with
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a seed, a desire to think differently. That is why they opened possibilities to plant the seed of

doing differently.

Pedagogical research in my practice

When I decided to act on that desire to think and do differently, I realized that my role

was more active in the research for education than I thought. When beginning work, research

was far from my practice, concerning experts who were above the practical issues of being in

the classroom and who generated the theory to improve educators' practices. Reflecting on

that, I can understand that the logic on which I was formed as an early childhood educator

responded to the "narrative of child development" (Vintimilla & Pacini- Ketchabaw, 2020, p.

630), and its prescriptions for the field, where the educator is mostly considered a passive

observer.

Moving beyond that perception of my role in pedagogical research, I can identify it

now as a crucial part of my practice. I have come to recognize that "theory is not brought in

and applied to research but lived throughout the process" (Hodgins, 2019, p. 5). That

recognition has opened endless possibilities (as endless as the multiple and plural realities of

ECE settings) for breaking the "flatness of sameness" (Vintimilla & Pacini- Ketchabaw,

2020, p. 633).

But in accepting my role as an active participant in research and thinking otherwise, I

have encountered many fences, a polite yet destructive resistance to change, which I will

discuss next.

In constant tension

Shifting from a passive observer when researching to an active participant has come

with lots of questioning. I have embraced those questions to initiate a dialogue within my

community. I have presented my wonderings and doubts on discourses which are constantly
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appearing at our team reunions, such as appropriate practice and the importance of child-

centeredness when planning. I have questioned how some new methodologies we have been

asked to apply fit within our reality. I have invited my colleagues to release their actions from

the image of the expert (Land et al., 2022). I have presented myself as far away as the expert

as possible; I have presented myself as a learner, an observer, a listener, and a part of the

mixture that is our school reality, filled with interconnections between humans, more than

humans and materials (Merewether, 2018). However, I have collided with my colleagues'

conformities and fears, with our school's leaders judging my actions as unnecessary and

revolutionary. I have met a sort of "neoliberal paradox" (Museus & Wang, 2022, p.19) which

claim that it is perfect to question “as long as doing so does not shift your gaze too far from

the superficial quantifiable metrics that your institution's surveillance system prioritize."

(Museus & Wang, 2022, p.20). I can resonate with what Cristina Vintimilla presented in her

article Encounters with a pedagogista (2018), as in my school, I can perceive "a politics of

niceness – a certain moralization of feelings, hiding paradoxes, fears and disappointments in/

from encounters with others" (p.25).

But even though it has been hard sustaining the questioning during this last part of the

year (because of the burnout that implies the end of the school year and the fear of not

knowing whether we will keep our jobs as the school is reducing staff), I have kept weekly

reflections with my team. We have come to recognize that our classroom and pedagogical

intentions are open to our biases and history and that they impact how we interact with our

environment.

Pedagogical documentation and curriculum making

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The seed for acting differently I presented in the first part of this paper led me to

reflect on how I am taking that aim to reality. When thinking about that, pedagogical

documentation and curriculum-making come to my mind.

The latest news on education in my country is related to the high absenteeism and

school dropouts, which are widening the gap at educational and economic levels. Its

economic, social, and ethical impact is under discussion, and different sides of society are

claiming actions. In the middle of this discussion, I reflect on the importance of engaging

with collective research in my practice and how pedagogical documentation offers dialogue

and collaboration opportunities (Hodgins, 2012.) that could generate a critical reflection on

the reasons that lie under this crisis. I can resonate with Museum and Wang (2022) when they

speak of the transformative capacity of reflexivity, as I believe that is what our system is

crying for, to stop and reflect. I believe that most of the educational crisis we are living in our

country is set in the logic of investment or in what Cristina D. Vintimilla and Veronica

Pacini-Ketchabaw describe as the "figure of the plantation" (2020, p. 633). Reflexivity might

allow us to deepen our understanding of why education is having such problems in my

country, Chile, and it can become what Museum and Wang describe as a "mechanism for

positive self-transformation" (2020, p. 23). I trust that seeing collective research as a vehicle

to engage in "reflective analysis and collective struggle" (Museum & Wang, 2020, p. 23) is a

way of facing the problem.

Becoming a pedagogist?

Pedagogical documentation potentiality arises when thinking of collective research as

a possibility for transformation. Denise Hodgins (2012) presents the potentiality of viewing

pedagogical documentation differently. She presents that it is not just a tool for assessment

(as it is mainly perceived and used) but as a methodology for child studies research. It is

because pedagogical documentation has a public nature that allows collective interpretation;
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the community is an active agent, so it becomes a democratic and more ethical way of

researching. This term, I have taken a role that I was not looking for but came with all the

recent experiences I discussed earlier in this paper. When I became active in research, I

started to share my reflections and ask questions; I began to "experiment with the ongoing

event" (Hodgins, 2012, p. 7) and realized that every day is filled with the unexpected and

with messiness and complexity (Hodgins, 2012). I began to show myself with all the

vulnerability that implies not having answers, not knowing. However, my colleagues still ask

me to lead our meetings, asking me questions about situations they lived in, decisions we

made, and so many other questions.

Moreover, I embraced that role, asking and being open to being asked back. I realized

I was engaging with collective research in an unexpected role, which led me to realize that I

know nothing and have no certainties. Thanks to the role that I feel I was led to, I broke the

"image of mastery and control" (Vintimilla, 2018, p.26) of the educator, which let me in a

very vulnerable position, and in which I asked myself where I am going from here.

I fear the title of pedagogista is not suitable in my case. It implies preparation and a

road I have yet to walk. However, I do know that I am open to what Cristina Vintimilla

(2018) named "the double movement of being-in-question and putting-into-question" (p. 22)

when critically reflecting with my colleagues. I am in the process of being in relation

(Tachine & Nicolozzo, 2022, p. 2) and making connections that, most time, lead not to

answers but to more questions.

Empowering

Once I recognize that I am in the process of being in relation with, I start seeing

curriculum making as a co-construction and also how knowledge creation is about creating

with and not on (Tachine & Nicolozzo, 2022). Furthermore, in the reflection guiding this
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paper, the notion of others scape the borders familiar to me, and the dyad teacher-student is

now multiple agents flowing (humans and more than humans).

It is a topic on which I have much more to read, reflect and analyze. However, sharing

my reflections with children, their families, and colleagues is a way to initiate a dialogue

regarding curriculum making. We can create something new in the collective discussions that

can emerge from the public nature of pedagogical documentation. It is my desire now to

empower children, their families, and my colleagues so they can embrace uncertainties and

imagine possibilities (Hodgins, 2012). Empowering them to become part of the construction

of what Cristina Vintimilla and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (2020) call a "life-making

curriculum" (p. 638). Empowering them to finally recognize what these authors say, that "we

do life through the small, every day, mundane gestures of co-composing through rituals,

encounters, exposures, working at dissensus, interrupting hegemony and normativity,

working through rather than intervening in problems." (p. 638).

I end my paper with this reflection, as it is really not about me going through a

journey when researching, but about WE. It is about finding ways to meet in the never-ending

dance of daily interactions lived in early childhood education spaces. Collective research has

become the way for me to meet with humans and more than humans. It has become the way

for me to go beyond what was natural in my setting and turn my practice into a more situated

and democratic one.

I am just starting this transformation, and it is full of more questions, but in the words

of Samuel Museus and Amy Wang (2022), keep asking and consider those questions when

research might "allow us to unlock the full potential power of scholarly research" (p. 27).
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References

Biesta, G. (2020). Educational Research: An unorthodox introduction. Bloomsbury

Academic. Chapter 3 ‘What Works’ Is Not Enough (47-62)

Hodgins, B. D. (2012). Pedagogical narrations’ potentiality as a methodology for child

studies research. Canadian Children, 37(1), 4–11.

https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v37i1.15185

Hodgins, D. (2019). Introduction. In D. Hodgins (Ed.), Feminist Research for 21st - Centruy

Childhoods: Common worlds methods (pp 1-14). Bloomsbury Academic.

Hodgins, B.D., Thompson, D., & Kummen, K. (2017). Weavings, walks and wonderings:

Stories of the liveliness of pedagogical narrations. In A. Fleet, C. Patterson, & J.

Robertson (Eds.) Pedagogical documentation in early years practice (pp. 193-206).

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23(2), 109-121

Merewether, J. (2018). Listening to young children outdoors with pedagogical

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Museus, S.D. and Wang, A.C. (2022). Refusing Neoliberal Logics in Research Design. In

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Tachine, A.R. and Nicolozzo, Z. (2022). Introduction. In A.R. Tachine & Z. Nicolozzo

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