Materiality in Early Childhood Studies

 Special Issue

International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 

Guest Editors: Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind & Laurie Kocher

Materials can be understood from a scientific-rational or functional point of view and through predictable properties of colour, shape, density, mass, friction and gravity. Yet materials live in the world in multiple ways. They can evoke memories, narrate stories, invite actions and communicate meanings. Materials and objects create meeting places. In early childhood we gather around things to investigate, negotiate, converse and share. Materials – a block of clay, pots of paint, a brush, a colourful wire, a brilliant sheet of paper – beckon and draw us in. Materials are not immutable, passive or lifeless until the moment we do something to them; they participate in our early childhood projects. They live, speak, gesture and call to us.

This special issue invites contributions that address materiality in early childhood studies from a variety of perspectives.  As a starting point, we are interested in contributions that conceptualize materiality through four bodies of literature: visual arts; feminist and science-technology studies; Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies; and posthumanist philosophies. As such, the focus of the special issue is the performativity of materials, what materials are capable of. 

Contributions that engage with materiality from historical, pedagogical, critical, artistic perspectives are welcomed. 

Abstracts are due September 30, 2013 and final papers must be submitted by January 3, 2014 .

Abstracts and papers can be submitted via email to
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (vpacinik@uvic.ca)

TIMELINE

September 30, 2013: Abstract (200 words) submission deadline

October 2013: Selection Review process.  Feedback to authors

January 3, 2014: Final papers due

January-March 2014:  Review process

March 2014: Feedback to authors

June 1, 2014: Final revised paper due

Publication Fall 2014