Reimagining Early Childhood Education online courses through co-creating the course ethics of care with infants and toddlers

Cohort March 2022: Faculty of Education – Dr. Iris Berger, Golda Lewin, Monica Chan

Project background

The goal of the project was to design a new online Early Childhood Education (ECE) course: “ECED 480b: Ethics of Care with Infants and Toddlers,” with a focus on how the course’s pedagogical intentions, especially in one that is focused on ethics, are reflected in its content and design while leaning on the knowledge gained from the students’ rich experience in taking ECED online courses.

Project details

The new course also aims to reflect major changes that have occurred in the ECE field in light of the current realities and pedagogical aspirations of our time. From a view of an educator who is highly engaged in ethical questions and reflection about education to its role in sustaining our common world.

The field of ECE, including the provision of care and education to infants and toddlers (ages birth to 30 months old), is going through major pedagogical, structural, and policy changes at the federal and provincial levels. In 2021, the federal government announced its commitment to forming a national childcare system recognizing the importance of childcare and early learning to the well-being of all communities and for the future of Canada. In British Columbia, profound and systemic changes to childcare have been occurring over the past several years. Most notable were the publication of a new Early Learning Framework (2019), the creation of an Early Childhood Pedagogical Network, and the transition of the responsibility for childcare from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to the Ministry of Education (2023).

Common to these changes is a growing understanding that ECE is beyond service for working parents, that the care for infants and toddlers is entailed with values and traditions and, as such, is inevitably rich with ethical and political questions. For example, the new Early Learning Framework draws from current anti-colonial, anti-racist, and environmental justice ECE scholarship. It portrays early childhood centres as inclusive spaces for actively attending to and resisting inequality and oppression. This positions educators as capable practitioners who deepen and extend children’s experiences through innovative curricular projects.

It has become widely recognised that the quality of ECE is inextricably related to the quality of the educational background of the early childhood educator. As such, we focused on curricular design with two main intentions:

  • Students are viewed as active participants in the course. To this end, the content pages were designed to disrupt passive modes of content consumption. Instead, they are organized under “active verbs” that invite students to a cycle of either listening, watching, or reading followed by reflecting and responding. The course invites students into a collaborative dialogue across a range of topics that illustrate the importance of cultivating an engaged, critical educator.
  • The notion of “care” and the ethics of care act as leading concepts that are both philosophical and practical. Students engage with “care” (through readings, videos, podcasts) as a practice that extends beyond the field of ECE; as a practice that is essential for sustaining life on earth.
  • Course assignments and activities, as well as feedback for assignments, aim to reflect the practice of an ethics of care.

Testimonials

Participating in this project was a powerfully enriching co-learning experience. I was humbled by the complexity of course design and my collaborators’ commitment to the creation of a multi-modal, lively, and praxis-oriented course. Thanks to the CTLT for facilitating this generative opportunity for students and faculty to experiment pedagogically together.

— Golda Lewin

I’m deeply grateful to have been a part of a Students as Partners project. Not only was it an enriching and synergizing experience to create a course with both the professor and a peer, but the experience was also an empowering one. It was an opportunity to honour student voices and enable one to shape their peer’s educational experiences in an unprecedented, immediate, and intimate manner.

— Monica Chan