International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal

https://iccpsonlinejournal.org/index.php/childhoods/issue/view/35

Janice Kroeger and Iris Berger (Editors). Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education: Turning to Hope, Making Santuary.  International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 12(2), December, 2025.

To figure out how, with each other, we can open up possibiities for what can still be...we can't do that in a negative mood.  We can't do that if we do nothing but critique.  We need critique; we absolutely need it.  But it's not going to open up the sense of what might yet be.  It's not going to open up the sense of that whch is not yet possible but profoundly needed. (Haraway, 2016)

Where there is hope there is difficulty. (Ahmed, 2017)

In this upcoming Special Issue of the International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal dated Vol. 12 No. 2 (2025),  the special issue co-editors Janice Kroeger and Iris Berger have selected seven articles that problematize the construction of childhoods, childism/s, and education at these moments, in diverse places as well as conceptual spaces.  In the call for articles, they state: "We seek to 'open up possibilities for what can still be' while recognizing the enormity of worldly issues facing early childhood educators, children and families.  The geo-politics of late capitalism, including wars, migration, pollution, extreme weather events, and the persistent effects of colonialism have created a precarious future for childhoods and the 'earthly communities of life' (Abram, 2020).  As we learn 'to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged early' (Haraway, 2016), we, in this volume/collection, acknowledge grief and despondency, while turning to hope (and reconciliation(s)) as a speculative gesture to the possibility that things can be otherwise.  We ask how might we do early childhood education in the messiness (and tragedies) of this moment?  We highlight movements, doings and undoings, which reconcile justice with childhood in its entanglement with the world by collectively (re)thinking, (re)configuring and (re)conceptualizing early childhood education now, a time of heavy childhoods, without dragging children through the muck."

At this moment, the world seems mired in heaviness.  We turn toward their notion of hope and sanctuary with the publication of the Special Issue -- seven articles, and an introductory article by the co-editors, in early winter, 2026.  

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.

Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.