Jane Merewether

Soil is crucial for earthly ongoingness, yet it is frequently overlooked or ignored by humans. This presentation will share early insights from a participatory research project exploring child-soil relations in Perth, Western Australia that is informed by the philosophy and practices of the educational project of Reggio Emilia. The study seeks to cultivate attentiveness to soil through aesthetic and speculative encounters where soil becomes an ecological imaginary for attuning to the inextricable connectedness of the world. The project is grounded in the idea that if we are to care for soil we need first need to notice it. It is hoped insights from this research will help to nourish pedagogical terrains for children and teachers in troubled times.

In this presentation, Dr Stefania Giamminuti and Dr Jane Merewether convey insights into the meaning and role of the atelier in the pedagogical and cultural experience of the world-renowned municipal infant-toddler centres and schools of the city of Reggio Emilia in Italy. They outline the atelier’s potential impact on transforming teacher professional learning by sharing a recent research project, a collaboration between academic researchers and a dedicated team of teacher researchers who work with children in a variety of settings from play groups to long day care to government and independent primary school settings. This co-participated research project, the Digital Investigations Atelier, culminated in an installation hosted at Curtin University in Western Australia in July 2019 as part of the REAIE Biennial Conference.

This presentation illuminates: the varied voices of members of the research team discussing the ‘theatrical’ collaborative experience of creating the atelier; the process of installation of this experimental space and its emphasis on alliances, exchange and dialogue between teachers and academics; visitors’ perceptions of their experience interacting in the digital atelier; and the potential of ateliers for bringing experimentation into the realm of the everyday in early childhood settings. We propose that with the aid of experimentation, invention, aesthetics, and professional alliances, early childhood education can be re-made in respect of democratic values and imaginative practices.

The unprecedented changes to Earth's ecological and geological processes are surely matters of care for education, yet, as feminist writers have pointed out, care is frequently undervalued and invisible. Care is loaded with tensions and complications and is messy, situated and never innocent or neutral. Moreover, caring for, with and about an increasingly damaged planet can seem overwhelming. In this presentation, I will explore notions of care as they relate to my current research investigating young children's relations with waste in their educational settings. Waste is a part of the everyday life of schools and early learning settings, yet it is frequently hidden from view. My research investigates what happens when we follow the entangled agencies and practices of waste and care and how they "come to matter" (Barad 2007). I explore how care includes an element of doing and thus offers a possible space of response-ability in a world that faces potentially catastrophic climate change.