CEDEP International Seminar “Early Childhood Education in an Era of Climate Change: SUBJECTIVITY AND LEARNING AS A RELATIONAL FIELD OF POTENTIA”

CEDEP International Seminar “Early Childhood Education in an Era of Climate Change: SUBJECTIVITY AND LEARNING AS A RELATIONAL FIELD OF POTENTIA”

Jointly hosted by the JSPS for Accelerated International Research: Building Educational Theories and Approaches for New Relationships between Children and Nature: Early Childhood Education in an Era of Climate Change

This is the second seminar on early childhood education in an era of climate change. Collaborative researchers from Japan, Canada and Sweden will come together and give a seminar from Stockholm University. Prof. Gunilla Dahlberg and Prof. Bodil Halvars will speak on SUBJECTIVITY AND LEARNING AS A RELATIONAL FIELD OF POTENTIA. A study of what else Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s process-ontology, and Felix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm can produce, when it comes to the image of the child, learning and living, and for the ecological idea that everything is in transformation, and in connection with everything else.

Program

Organizer’s greetings and introduction of speakers

Sachiko Asai (Professor, The University of Tokyo / Deputy Director of CEDEP)
 

Lecture

SUBJECTIVITY AND LEARNING AS A RELATIONAL FIELD OF POTENTIA
Gunilla Dahlberg (Professor Emerita of Education, Stockholm University）
Bodil Halvars (Program Director for Preschool Teacher Education, Stockholm University)

In the first part of this webinar Prof. Gunilla Dahlberg is asking if it is the case that the children, the teachers, the parents and the whole Reggio-community have succeeded in opening up an educational project for a new era, through not having the indignity of speaking for the children, rather, through serious listening, and through focusing the event, affect, and the whole relational field of potentiality. Hence, being able to opening up new universes of existence.

In the second part of the webinar, Ph.D. Bodil Halvars is presenting a study in which children's exploratory processes and meaning-making in a “Tree-project” are followed. By mapping the children's exploratory processes from the Deleuzian inspired concept of learning as a relational field of potentiality (Dahlberg & Elfström, 2014) children’s meaning-making is made visible. This mapping shows how children's questions center on complex issues with connections to ecological issues and sustainability. In line with this didactical aspects will be explored.
 

Concluding comments

Ryoko Kodama (Professor, Ochanomizu University)
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (Professor, Western University, Canada）

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Gunilla Dahlberg, Ph.D. is Professor emerita of education at Stockholm University, Department of Child and Youth Studies. Since 1971 she has carried out research in the field ECEC. The last three decades she and her colleagues have explored how poststructuralism, process-ontology and more-than human perspectives may contribute to the transformation of the field of ECEC. She was one of the experts writing up the first national curriculum for the Swedish pre-school system. She is a member of the scientific board of Fondazione Reggio Children, Centro Loris Malaguzzi.

Bodil Halvars, Ph.D. Having worked as a teacher in primary and pre-schools, she became a project assistant at Stockholm University College of Teacher Education in 2002 and a lecturer at Stockholm University in 2008, where she received her Ph.D. in Pedagogy in 2010. She is presently Program Director for Preschool Teacher Education, Stockholm University, Department of Child and Youth Studies. She is currently working on a tree project in two early childhood classes.