Pedagogies of Temporality
Pedagogies of temporality involve what Metcalf and Van Dooren (2012) refer to as ‘taking time seriously’. In the 21st century, and at a time of so much loss within ecologies, taking temporal frames seriously in early childhood education means learning ‘to become loose and multiple’ (Metcalf and Van Dooren, 2012: viii) in our understandings of time, rather than adhering to regulated clocking practices. It means learning to notice what and who else is there with us in the world, in the playground and in other places we inhabit with children. It means learning to pay attention to which times are liveable and which are not – learning to synchronize ourselves across many and varied temporal horizons. ‘Knots of ethical time’ in pedagogies highlight human/non-human entanglements and reposition time as a situated more-than-human concern, challenging Cartesian sequential time. In engaging with non-human times in our pedagogies, we are not necessarily suggesting that these times should become our new tools to think with.
In other words, pedagogies of temporality do not replace clock time. Instead, it highlights that knots of time bind us together and, in doing so, become relations of obligation. Working with pedagogies of temporality obliges us to recognize the diversity and the entanglement of multiple times in children’s common worlds, and to make more and deeper connections and commitments to them.
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
To read more see Shifting temporal frames in children’s common worlds in the Anthropocene