The Pedagogist Network of Ontario creates the processes and pedagogical trajectories necessary to become a pedagogist in Ontario. Through these processes, pedagogists and researchers collaborate to think intensely about the educational practice of a pedagogist, and the possibilities and commitments that this work might open up. In other words, we collectively craft spaces to co-invent pedagogies that take up questions of ‘living well with children’, and creating conditions for liveable futures.
We challenge the idea that early childhood education is a space for children’s socialization into the current status quo. Pedagogists offer questions and trajectories that have the potential to interrupt and transform existing norms, truths, structures, and inheritances in early childhood education. We do this with the intention to create and care for pedagogical relations – that is, relations that shape educational encounters and continually engage in the ongoing work of living curriculum with children.
Importantly, the Pedagogist Network of Ontario resists taking the form of a professional development certification or a pre-articulated program of study, both in the work of becoming a pedagogist and within the collaborative inquiries that pedagogists and early childhood educators create together. Instead, we see the work of a pedagogist as profoundly situated, responsive, and ongoing. Pedagogists continually inquire into the ethics and uncertainty of encountering early childhood education while thinking pedagogically.
