Pedagogies of Entangled Dialogues
“Dialogue is a method for opening conversations so that they are inclusive and responsive” (Rose, 2015, p. 128).
As the municipality prepares for construction of wastewater attenuation tanks, we are invited into an unexpected exchange when deep core sampling in the forest exposes ancient Clay formations. A lively dialogue of disrupted timescales commences. Hands and Clay talk of being saturated with heavy rains as a sticky grittiness moves between. Clay divulges microscopic bacteria, infiltrating the air and filling olfactory sensors with an earthly smell. Sloshing squelching sounds emerge as feet and Clay move together until a boisterous exchange between boots, bodies, and Clay erupts into laughter, and some tears, as they become fully engulfed, collectively slipping and falling. Clay tells stories of extractive capitalism, both in the forest for attenuation tanks and in Medicine Hat where we order clay for use in the centre. Clay asks that, “we embrace noisy and unruly processes capable of finding dialogue…equally with the world itself” (Rose, 2015, p. 131).
These dialogues require us to attend to the situated, lively, uneven, embodied, affective, and agentic human and more-than-human relations that co-shape worlds. Pedagogies of entangled dialogues transpire as a space open to encounter—a space of unknown, challenge, risk, surprise, question, care, change, and action (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017; Rose 2015). It is through this dialogue that we become human in connection with more-than-human, a continuous negotiating of flourishing relations (Rose, 2015). These pedagogies compel us to wonder, how might entangled dialogues with vibrant materials—such as clay—change how we attend to extractive consumption practices materializing in early childhood settings?
Sherri-Lynn Yazbeck
References
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Kind, S., & Kocher, Laurie. (2017). Encounters with materials in early childhood education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315743257
Rose, D.B. (2015). Dialogue. In K. Gibson, D. B., Rose, & R. Fincher (Eds.), Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene (pp. 127-131). Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0100.1.00