2021 RECE 30th Anniversary Webinar Series
What Should Matter in ECE? Critical Conversations
Presented 27 October 2021 Europe/US • 28 October 2021 Australasia
Our first webinar with I-fang Lee (Australia), Mere Skerrett (New Zealand), Ayesha Rabadi-Raol (Canada), Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (Canada), and Marcela Montserrat Fonseca-Bustos (Norway) was moderated by Gail Boldt (USA). A critical conversation amongst the panelists will open dialogue around what matters and what should matter as we face the complexities and the pressing issues of the 21st century and beyond.
Moderator
Gail Boldt
Gail Boldt is a Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University, teaching undergraduate courses in literacy education and Ph.D. seminars in theory and philosophy as they relate to contemporary issues in education. She is the senior editor of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series. She is also a psychotherapist offering play therapy in a community mental health setting. Her most recent research focuses on how learning and change occur in her therapy practice with children, theorized through contemporary relational psychoanalysis and through the work Deleuze and Guatarri, to reconceptualize learning and change in early years classrooms. She argues that in both education and clinical settings, faith in language, symbolization, conscious awareness, and intention as vehicles of learning, relating, and change are over-determined and often misplaced, ignoring the centrality of preconscious affect, non-symbolized forms of relating, experiences of vitality, and flows of desire.
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw is a Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Curriculum at Western University in Ontario, Canada. She is also Senior Fellow of NORRAG, and co-director of the Pedagogist Network of Ontario, and the British Columbia Early Childhood Pedagogies Network.
Veronica’s writing and research contribute to the Common Worlds Research Collective (tracing children’s relations with places, materials, and other species), and the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory (experimenting with the contours, conditions, and complexities of 21st century pedagogies).
Mere Skerrett
Mere Skerrett, Head of the School of Education, Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) spent much of her career in early years education in the establishment phase of, and working within, the Kōhanga Reo (language nest) movement and Kura Kaupapa Māori (its schooling extension). She established Te Amokura Kōhanga Reo in Hamilton, named by her grandmother Raiha Serjeant after the great seabird, the Amokura, which helped to guide ancestral Māori to Aotearoa, NZ. She is also interested in equity issues as they relate to Māori as Tāngata Whenua (Indigenous people of the land), women’s issues, children’s rights, and social and ecological justice. Mere hails from tribal groupings in both the North and South Islands of Aotearoa. Her research interests have been focussed around Indigenous language/s revitalisation, and the relationship of Māori language to Māori knowledge, identity, culture, and world view/s. Mere recently graduated from Te Panekiretanga o te Reo Māori (a Māori Language Academy), as the Kirikawa – the top graduate in tikanga Māori. She proudly wears the moko kauae (traditional design on chin) to represent her journey into ‘te whakarauora reo Māori’ (Māori language regeneration) and ‘te katinga o te kēti’ the very last intake to graduate from that Academy.
I-Fang Lee
Dr. I-Fang Lee is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. I-Fang’s teaching, research trajectories and scholarly publications have focused on contemporary issues relating to equity and justice in the field of early childhood care and education to unpack what is taken for granted in research, policy, curriculum and pedagogical practices related to childhoods, families and programs. Her intercultural teaching and research projects are strongly nested across multiple geopolitical locations including East Asia, Australia, and the United States. She engages in inter-disciplinary collaborations to advocate the local and global importance of inclusive and holistic education for all.
Ayesha Rabadi-Raol
Dr. Ayesha Rabadi-Raol is an experienced Early Childhood Educator and Teacher Educator. She has taught in diverse settings in India, USA, and Canada for a cumulative 20 years. After earning an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, she is now an Assistant Professor at Sonoma State University. Rabadi-Raol’s research focuses on equity and justice, centering the experiences of intersectionally minoritized children and teachers of color. She has authored/ coauthored articles and book chapters and continues to build her research trajectory by amplifying the stories of historically minoritized populations of young children and their teachers, as well as reflecting on her own teaching practice. Critically examining pedagogies of power and privilege, as a teacher and scholar, she takes a hopeful stance towards reconceptualizing early childhood education and teacher education.
Marcela Montserrat Fonseca Bustos
Marcela Montserrat Fonseca Bustos is an assistant professor in early childhood at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. She was born in Chile, and raised in Norway, where she is currently living. Bustos has been an active member of the RECE community since 2005 and was introduced to the community by Doctor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones, who was her mentor, supervisor and academic mother.
Bustos research interest include critical perspectives on inclusion, exclusion, privilege, power hierarchies, and methodologies. Critical issues in her research are multiculturalisms, multilingualisms, gender and heteronormativities, ableisms, racism and racialized identities, and the intersections between these. Bustos also works close with the practice field, collaborating with teachers in kindergartens, to rethink and reconceptualize what everyday practices for children can be, with a focus on children’s perspectives and right to play and participation.