Artefact I
Partner Dialogue with Val Marsh
Module 8: Activism in ECE
ECED 533 - Advanced Seminar on Research in Early Childhood Education:
Leadership and Policy in Early Childhood Education, Dr. Iris Berger
Photo from UnSplash, Woliul Hasan
This artefact centres a sustained dialogue between Val and myself, in which we engaged in critical conversation as a method for working through entanglements in early childhood education.
We explored how our identities, values, and professional responsibilities are shaped and stretched by dominant narratives surrounding care, leadership, and activism. Our dialogue surfaced entanglements around care and language, revealing how everyday practices are shaped by power.
The primary intent of this artefact, however, is to highlight the critically safe space in which these dialogues unfolded. Together, Val and I stepped into spaces that we may not have otherwise ventured into had it not been for the critically safe space we nurtured through our shared work over three years. Through shared inquiry, vulnerability, and sustained reflection, dialogue became a site for deepening critical consciousness (Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2017), allowing both of us to better understand ourselves, our positioning, and our responsibilities within justice-oriented early childhood practice.
Through ongoing, trust-based dialogue, Escamilla and Meier (2018) note that sustained participation in professional learning communities grounded in shared inquiry cultivates “professional trust” (p. 8), creating the conditions necessary for educators to engage critically and reflexively with uncertainty. This artefact supports Strand 2, nurturing my own critical curiosity by demonstrating my understanding of the significance of fostering and prioritizing such opportunities for both myself and other early childhood educators - to understand that we are not alone, to gain critical perspectives from others, and to listen, with intentionality, to the stories that bring us together.
Strand II
Photo from UnSplash, Bruno Brikmanis-Jurjans
Strand II: Entangled
-
To nurture a stance of critical curiosity by continuing to deepen my own learning around equity and social justice, recognizing that ongoing personal and professional growth is necessary to authentically support and advocate for responsive, inclusive, and belonging-focused early learning environments.
“On some days, the uncertainty is liberating as I can explore possibilities rather than conform to the image of the good teacher” (Moss, 2019, p. 102).
Entanglement refers to the moments in which stories, systems, and practice pull and stretch against one another surfacing tension - the knots formed when dominant narratives, societal and policy expectations, and lived realities collide.
This strand acknowledges that transformative learning often begins in discomfort – when we step into spaces of disequilibrium,
when certainty unravels, and when familiar narratives no longer fit. Drawing on critical sociocultural perspectives, entanglement reflects the non-neutrality of the spaces we occupy - fields already shaped by colonial histories, racialized structures, weighted hierarchies, and normalized ways of knowing, being, and doing.
Entanglement, then, is a requisite of social justice work; it demands ongoing reflexivity, collective dialogue, and a willingness to interrogate how one’s own positioning shapes pedagogical decisions. Vossoughi and Gutiérrez (2017) describe this process as becoming “critically conscious” (p. 142), emphasizing that transformation emerges not through mastery, but through negotiating and navigating spaces of flux.
Across the artefacts in this strand, entanglement becomes a space where vulnerability is required, and where new possibilities can be imagined through collective inquiry. These artefacts document (shared) moments in which my own assumptions were unsettled and where learning required me to remain present within ambiguity rather than retreat into the comfort of the known and familiar.
Entanglement requires that we “agitate the conventions that structure education unjustly” (Vintimilla et al., 2023, p. 8).
Artefact II
Partner Dialogue with Val Marsh
Module 12: Co-creating Alternative Narratives Toward a Pedagogy of Hope
ECED 533 - Advanced Seminar on Research in Early Childhood Education:
Leadership and Policy in Early Childhood Education, Dr. Iris Berger
This artefact centres a final, sustained partner dialogue between Val and myself, presented as a written summary of the dialogic exchange focused on co-creating alternative narratives toward a pedagogy of hope. Through this dialogue, we engaged in critical conversation as a method for working within entanglements rather than seeking resolution or closure.
We returned to dominant discourses that shape early childhood education, noticing
Photo from UnSplash, Tom Smeeton
how these narratives operate and considering the counter-stories that become possible when certainty is unsettled.
Reflecting on our time at UBC, we no longer experience learning as linear or cumulative. As shared in this artefact (Steinke, 2024):
“We are estranged from our starting point. And so, the idea of spiraling, as described by Andreotti (2021, as cited in Berger, 2025), resonates more deeply. The movement remains cyclical, but with less predictability. We may cross back into places we once stood, but always with a new perspective, because we are not in a fixed space and may construct and co-construct our own identity in ways that feel right (Moss, 2018)."
Within this spiralling movement, entanglement becomes generative; an invitation to remain present within uncertainty.
Through shared inquiry, dialogic critique, and attentiveness to minor stories, we asked one another how we might “remain engaged and entangled” (Steinke, 2024) rather than retreat into the comfort of familiar narratives. In doing so, we positioned hope not as optimism, but as practice.
This artefact supports Strand 2, representing my commitment to stay within the tangle - to continue learning through collective dialogue, vulnerability, and reflexivity. It reflects an understanding that justice-oriented early childhood practice requires openness to being undone and remade in relation with others and with the world (Steinke, 2024), and that transformative learning often emerges not at the end of inquiry, but at its renewed beginning.
Artefact III
Pedagogical Declaration
ECED 533 - Advanced Seminar on Research in Early Childhood Education:
Leadership and Policy in Early Childhood Education, Dr. Iris Berger
This artefact is a pedagogical declaration, articulating the stance I am committing to inhabit as an educator and as an individual.
It names my responsibilities, vulnerabilities, and refusals, and highlights listening, positionality, and the courage to remain present within uncertainty.
Photo from UnSplash, Sophie
This declaration emerged through deep self-reflection, prompted by my own wonderings. I began by asking, “What is my image of the child? What is my image of the family? What is my image of the educator?” Yet I kept coming back to the same space of unknowing: Where do I sit within this? Who am I? What is my image of myself?
This artefact documents a moment of becoming - the introspective work of situating myself in the here and now while also considering my journey to this point and the path forward. It supports Strand 2, maintaining critical curiosity by reflecting my commitment to remain within entanglement, to resist shrinking, to name and examine my positionality, and to practice justice-oriented education
Artefact IV
Personal Reflection
Module 9: Responsibility to Engage with Decolonizing Pedagogies
ECED 533 - Advanced Seminar on Research in Early Childhood Education:
Leadership and Policy in Early Childhood Education, Dr. Iris Berger
This artefact is a written reflection responding to the question of educators’ responsibilities in engaging with decolonizing pedagogies. Within the reflection, I liken colonialism to an oak tree: “old, strong, and steady. Its roots run deep, its presence enduring” (Steinke, 2025b). This metaphor captures how colonialism is not confined to the past but remains entangled within current systems, policies, and everyday practices in early childhood education.
Photo from UnSplash, Kathy I
This artefact interrogates how decolonization is often reduced to symbolic or aesthetic acts, such as land acknowledgements or cultural celebrations, without sustained attention to the conditions that make such gestures appear sufficient. Treating Indigeneity as spectacle, “cultural but not political; visual but not sensorial; passive but not participatory,” allows reconciliation to proceed without truth-telling (Diaz-Diaz, 2022, as cited in Steinke, 2025b). Without truth-telling, however, can reconciliation be meaningful? How can we begin to untangle ourselves without first situating ourselves within these histories and relations?
This artefact illustrates how decolonizing work requires educators to step into these tensions: examining their positionality, questioning taken-for-granted practices, and remaining present within ambiguity. It supports Strand 2, nurturing a stance of critical curiosity by demonstrating my engagement with the tensions inherent in decolonizing pedagogies and my willingness to remain within discomfort as a site of ongoing learning.
“To do unsettling work requires preparedness to be unsettled or disconcerted. It is risky business. It involves asking hard and provocative questions, disturbing complacency, troubling norms, and interrogating conventional truths. It involves interrupting the business-as-usual of everyday life and practice”
(Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2015, p. 1)
This artefact was originally created and submitted as an audio recording. To preserve its original form, I am sharing an audio version in addition to this written submission.