Disrupting Developmentalism in Canadian Early Years Education

Adam Davies (they/them/he/him/all) is a tenured associate professor in the School of Fine Arts and Music, College of Arts, University of Guelph and is a registered early childhood educator and Ontario certified teacher. Adam's work investigates issues pertaining to social justice and equity in early childhood education, K–12 schooling, and higher education. Adam is a queer, neurodivergent, and Mad(dened) activist, scholar, and teacher/educator/practitioner. Adam holds a PhD in curriculum studies and teacher development with collaborative specializations in women and gender studies and sexual diversity studies from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Adam recently co-edited the text Queering Professionalism: Pitfalls and Possibilities with Cameron Greensmith (University of Toronto Press).Zuhra Abawi is an assistant professor of education at Niagara University and Chair of the Master of Educational Leadership program. Prior to her faculty appointment, she was an elementary teacher and early childhood educator. She holds a doctorate in social justice education from the University of Toronto. Her teaching experience spans K–12 to higher education. She is the author of The Effectiveness of Educational Policy for Bias-Free Hiring: Critical Insights to Enhance Diversity in the Canadian Teacher Workforce (2021) and co-editor of Equity as Praxis in Early Childhood Education and Care (2021) and Enacting Anti-Racist and Activist Pedagogies in Education: Canadian Perspectives (2023) and Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools: Canadian Perspectives (2025). Her work focuses on how discourses of race, equity, and identity are negotiated, mediated, and socialized in education.Brooke Richardson (she/her) is a care activist, scholar, and mother motivated by the belief that good care is foundational to meaningful lives and a democratic society. Brooke is an assistant professor in child and youth studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada. Her research and scholarly work focus on disrupting increasingly privatized "care" systems (child care and child protection) and working toward societies that uphold the integrity of all those involved (children, mothers, educators, social workers). Brooke published two co-edited anthologies in 2022: Feminisms and the Early Childhood Educator: Critical Conversations (Bloomsbury, with Rachel Langford) and Mothering on the Edge: A Critical Examination of Mothering within Child Protection Systems (Demeter Press).

• ForewordIntroduction: Disrupting Developmentalism to Create Space for New Knowings and Becomings in Early Childhood EducationChapter 1: Struggling with the Work of the Pedagogist in Canada: Subtracting Early Childhood Education from Child Development Chapter 2: In the Threshold of a Cruel and Humble Optimism—Contesting Developmentalism Through Critical Disability Studies Chapter 3: (Re)Imagining Human Development: Opening Decolonizing Possibilities Through a Post-Secondary Educational Psychology Course Chapter 4: "Every Child Matters": Canadian Pre-Service Teachers' Critical Engagement with Indigenous Life-Narrative Picture books Chapter 5: Honouring the Learning Spirit of Indigenous Children in Early Education Chapter 6: Decolonizing a Linear Conception of Teacher Education: Disrupting Developmental Paradigms Through an Ethics of Care Chapter 7: Re-storying of an Immigrant Child in Canada: Exploring Pedagogical Criticalities in Problematizing the Dominant Clinical Discourses Chapter 8: Disrupting Developmentalism through Queer Theory in Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education: A Document Analysis Chapter 9: "So That's When I Started to Feel the Passion in My Heart Start to Evolve": Being Cared About and Caring For Pedagogy Through a Feminist Care Ethics Chapter 10: Objections to Objective List Theories and Development As Well-being Chapter 11: Decolonizing our Understanding of Indigenous Children and Learning Chapter 12: Is Psychoanalysis Developmentalism? Some Thoughts on Encounters with Psychoanalytic Theory Chapter 13: Toward an Ex-Colonial Childhood: Collective Exits from Colonialisms in Mi'kmaw Literatures Chapter 14: Deconstruction of the "At-Risk" Designation: Synthesis of a Critical Discourse Analysis Chapter 15: Decolonizing Canadian Elementary Teacher Education: Connection-Based Learning, Critical Reflexivity, and Social Justice Chapter 16: From Parenting "Expert" to Parenting Ally: Re-examining the Role of the Early Childhood Educator Through a Family-Centred Framework Chapter 17: Disrupting Developmentalism by Cultivating Wisdom Chapter 18: Troubling Educators' Humanist Assumptions: Possible (Re)configurations of Authority Through the Intra-Actions of Children and Classroom ChairsConclusion: "Develop Me!"—A Contrarian Poem for Non-Developmental Futurities in Early Childhood Education and BeyondContributor Biographies