Frances Smyth

Pedagogical Commitments:

I am committed to complexifying the taken-for-granted understandings of well-being and care embedded in early childhood education. Commonly held conceptions of care and well-being are positioned within humancentric notions of relationality. I am interested in pedagogical work with children and educators that moves beyond humanism in hopes of creating ethical relationships that enliven new ways of being and becoming. My pedagogical wonderings include these questions: How can we think with more-than-human companions in early childhood education? What becomes possible when we think about community as composed of more than just humans?

To enact this work, I am committed to engaging with these questions through common worlds pedagogies. These commitments work to create intentionality in the language I use, the questions I ask, the materials I choose, the routines and schedules of the classrooms, and the way curriculum is created. I work closely with educators and young children to notice the many entangled worlds around us by slowing down and carefully attending to the places we inhabit to think about where we live, how we live, and how we might live in ways that take seriously the well-being of the world. In this slowing down, my intention is to responsibly attend to the inheritances of settler colonialism and ecological precarity in thoughtful, responsive, and ethical ways. For instance, I am currently inquiring with a group of children and educators to highlight the complex political relationships children have with the places where they play.