Leveling up to honour ethical relationality: pedagogical documentation as methodological entanglement

Abstract

ABSTRACTEducation today is not simple nor does it occur in isolation. Educators, now more than ever, are teaching within the global context of calls to action for truth and reconciliation with Indigenous communities around the world and a growing awareness of the damage caused by unsustainable human consumption of the environment. Drawing from an ongoing professional development project involving educators across four childcare centres, this article explores “leveling up” using Pedagogical Documentation and Barad (2007) diffractive thinking to explore new ways to help our human-centred and colonised minds understand Indigenous world views and see ourselves as part of the environment. The way we view PD must be considered critically, knowing that when we work to name, produce, catalyse and move learning forward we must also attend to how various matters have come to matter and how we (as observers and documenters) are part of this relational encounter. What we name as educative in the teaching and learning processes rests on our world view. This article addresses the question: How might leveling up and diffractive methodology inform our use of Pedagogical Documentation and take us beyond traditional human centred and bounded ways of seeing the world and curriculum?

Keywords

• Pedagogical documentation
• diffractive methodology
• relationality
• human centricity
• world view
• leveling up