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The ECPN Team

Kathleen Kummen Profile Photo

Kathleen Kummen

Co-Director

Kathleen is a co-director of the ECPN and the chair of the School of Education and Childhood Studies at Capilano University, located on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, shíshálh, Lil’Wat, and Musqueam Nations. As a researcher, educator and instructor, Kathleen endeavours to reimagine and revitalize early childhood leadership as an ongoing practice of disruption to make space for alternative narratives of early childhood education.

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw Profile Photo

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw

Co-Director

Veronica is a professor of early childhood education in the Faculty of Education at Western University in Ontario, Canada, and co-director of the ECPN. Prior to joining Western University, she was a professor in the School of Child & Youth Care at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where she now serves as an adjunct professor. Her 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).

Denise Hodgins Profile Photo

Denise Hodgins

Deputy Director

Denise is the deputy director of the ECPN and lead researcher and pedagogist with UVic Child Care Services. Her work is rooted in feminist material theoretical perspectives, which she explores in her books Gender and Care with Young Children: A Feminist Material Approach to Early Childhood Education (2019) and Feminist Research for 21st-Century Childhoods: Common Worlds Methods (2019), various journal articles and chapters in edited books. Denise lives and works on Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ traditional territories and is a member of the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory and Common Worlds Research Collective.​

Randa Khattar Profile Photo

Randa Khattar

Administrative Director

Randa Khattar is Knowledge Mobilization Director for the ECPN and an adjunct professor and instructor in Western University’s Faculty of Education. Previously she held the position of executive director of the Secretariat for the Ontario Centres of Excellence for Early Years and Child Care. She served as coeditor of the Journal of Childhood Studies from 2018 to 2020. She was elected into the role of president of the Canadian Association for Young Children (CAYC) in 2020. Randa’s research collaborations include the Climate Action Network, Early Childhood Collaboratories, Pedagogist Network of Ontario and the Common Worlds Research Collective. She lives and works on the territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinabek, the Chippewas, and the Wendat.

Narda Nelson Profile Photo

Narda Nelson

Pedagogical Communications Coordinator

Narda is a pedagogist and researcher with the University of Victoria Child Care Services and works with the ECPN as pedagogical communications coordinator and a faculty stream pedagogist. Drawing on her background in gender studies, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to research and practice with a particular interest in reimagining ethical futures with plant, animal, and waste flow relations in early childhood. Born and raised in Treaty 8 country, Narda lives and works on Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ territories. She is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective and Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory.

Meagan Montpetit Profile Photo

Meagan Montpetit

Pedagogical Coordinator

Meagan is the Pedagogical Coordinator at the ECPN. She is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective and the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory. Meagan’s doctoral research reimagines children’s’ and educators’ relations with more-than-human others with theories of feminist spiritualities. Meagan has taught at post-secondary institutions in British Columbia and Ontario. She is grateful to live on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Sarah Hennessy Profile Photo

Sarah Hennessy

Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator

Sarah is a multimodal researcher, educator and artist at The University of Western Ontario. With particular attention to early childhood education, she is curious about art (as artist, witness, and educator) and how to engage in the complexification of living and learning with others, more-than-humans and humans alike. Her research merges art and education in the creation of an Uncommon Field Guide to think with place, young children and climate times. She grateful to live, work and research on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton Peoples. Hennessy is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective.

Our Partners

BC Aboriginal Child Care Society Logo

The ECPN is partnering with the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society (BCACCS) to create the First Nations Pedagogies Network (FNPN) which supports and brings together the work of First Nations equivalents of Pedagogists in the ECPN to work with each other, Indigenous Elders, First Nations early childhood education programs (those existing and those being created) and First Nations communities to realize, affirm, extend and secure distinctly First Nations promise and practice in ELCC.  Read more here.

BCACCS is a centre of excellence for Indigenous early learning and child care committed to nurturing excellence through community outreach, education, research and advocacy by ensuring every Indigenous child in BC has access to spiritually enriching, culturally grounded, high-quality early learning and child care services. BCACCS brings its more than 20 years of experience creating, sustaining and supporting First Nations ELCC to FNPN development.

BCACCS does this in keeping with its mandates to implement the First Nations ELCC framework in ways that support Indigenous languages, cultures and knowledges via Indigenous conceptions of quality programs, and services, and partnerships and capacity development. Shared commitments with ECPN are generative of work in all streams of the ECPN, as are cross-network collaboration and sharing through the First Nations Pedagogies Network (FNPN). The members of the First Nations Pedagogies Network work in the guidance and collaboration of First Nations communities to strengthen First Nations early care and learning throughout BC on Indigenous terms.

Early Childhood Educators of BC Logo

The ECPN is also working with Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC) to host the ECPN Pedagogist E-learning materials and resources within the Early Years Professional Development Hub.

ECEBC is dedicated to building respect for early childhood education and educators. It represents the BC early childhood care and education profession by providing professional development opportunities, training and resources for BC early childhood educators and supporting them to inform the broader community about their work.

BC Metis Nation Logo

The ECPN is collaborating with Métis Nation British Columbia (MNBC) to create living conditions for the role of the pedagogist in Indigenous terms to flourish in the Métis community. Métis Nation BC is recognized by the Métis National Council, Government of British Columbia, and the Government of Canada, as the Governing Nation for Métis in BC.

Two Métis Pedagogists are employed by MNBC. Métis are one of three distinct Indigenous peoples of Canada (First Nations, Métis & Inuit). Providing distinctions-based Métis early learning opportunities is vital to the cultural identity of its people. MNBC recognizes that to achieve educational success, Métis learners need to see themselves reflected in the educational system. This begins in early learning.

The Métis acknowledge that children are sacred gifts from our ancestors. They become knowledge-carriers and carry our culture, language, and heritage forward for future generations. The Métis place children at the centre of all that we do, striving to honor the traditional concept, Takaki Awasisiwin, which means “a good childhood for the future of our people”. Métis early childhood educators play a central role in creating the conditions that nurture the potential of our children and unlock the spirit of our communities. Métis early childhood educators are the foundation in the delivery of culturally sensitive, inclusive child care and education.

Métis pedagogists introduce a two-eyed way of seeing.  Learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both eyes together for the benefit of all in early learning programs across British Columbia. Through Métis ways of knowing and being Métis pedagogists introduce and support pedagogical projects in collaboration with Elders, early childhood educators, and families inclusive of all cultural backgrounds within their community.