Spatialising the curriculum

ABSTRACT

From Froebel and the constructivists’s early educational theories to more recent posthumanist thinking, early childhood development (ECD) has been understood to be optimal when it occurs at the level of senses and bodies. ‘Integration’ discourses prevalent in ECD educational policy and curriculum debates have pointed towards sensing bodies in space. But efforts to bring sensing bodies and space to the centre of ECD practice has remained incomplete. With research-creation’s more open lens, we use the project upon which this article is based to gesture towards how curricula might be spacialised with sensing bodies in mind. We do this by designing, constructing, and studying a prototype ECD learning environment in South Africa at the level of material objects and spaces with curricular and policy imperatives imbricated into the building structure itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Architecture
• design
• integrated early childhood development (ECD)
• reconceptualist
• curriculum

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the work of two team members: Benoit Lachapelle and Martin Laferriere. Lachapelle completed the architectural renderings in the figures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada defines ‘research-creation’ as: ‘An approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation’ (http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/definitions-eng.aspx#a22). This research category is used in Canada to fund research by artists and designers with the designers mostly doing work that does not require, for example, for a real prototype structure to be structurally sound for occupants. Thus, SSHRC research-creation grant that funded this project is different; it is not an art project as a structure occupied by children has to at a fundamental level be structurally sound. Also, as a research-creation project, three Global North researchers like us could not ethically go to our South African partners and say ‘this is how you should do this.’ Thus, we worked with what our South African partners gave us and, given the need to meet the state requirements, we proceeded accordingly.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant [430-2016-429] proposed and led by Kai Wood Mah and Patrick Lynn Rivers .

Notes on contributors

Emily Johanna Ashton

Emily Johanna Ashton is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, at the University of Regina. Her research interests include looking critically at the increasingly intense chorus of environmental threats--abridged under the title Anthropocene--and how these are linked to ideas about children and childhoods. Specifically, she looks at child-figures in speculative texts of the end of the world and how anti-black racism and settler colonialism impact imaginaries of survival amidst ecological destruction. Other key interests include early childhood education in the Global South. She has worked with teachers and researchers in Malawi, Tanzania, and South Africa, including the development of a searchable database of publications pertaining to care, development, research, and education of young children in sub-Saharan Africa (http://www.ecdafricaresources.org/).

Kai Wood Mah

Kai Wood Mah is a design historian, licensed architect, and professor who also co-directs Afield (www.afield.ca), which is a design research practice with footholds in Cape Town, Chicago, and Montreal. Mah's architectural practice is interdisciplinary and grounded in site-specific investigations employing archives, fieldwork, social science methodologies, and research-creation.

Patrick Lynn Rivers

Patrick Lynn Rivers is a political scientist, professor, and co-director of the design research practice Afield (www.afield.us). Broadly interested in culture, policy, and society, Rivers's hybrid and increasingly collaborative work is characterised by situated and comparative thinking that deploys tools from academic and practice-based disciplines.