A special interest group of Canadian Society for the Study of Education
Canadian Association for Research in Early Childhood (CAREC) Pre-CSSE Conference Conversations
Inciting and Sustaining Radical Dialogues in Early Childhood Research: Studying Questions
Sat, May 31, 2025
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
George Brown College Waterfront Daniels Building (WFD)
The 2025 CAREC Pre-Conference continues an ongoing labour toward inciting and sustaining radical dialogue in early childhood research in Canada. This year’s event recognizes a question as vital to how we think and dialogue in early childhood research. We gather, in the spirit of study (Kohan et al, 2023), to explore the questions of early childhood research in Canada, including their contours, inheritances, mechanics, and consequences. Through the collective study of questions, we set out to trace the selective character of legitimizing knowledges that restricts conditions for dialogue in this field, and ask what might become possible in its absence. We propose a modest situation that requires us -- the diverse collective that shares in our commitment to studying, nurturing, and building livable worlds with young children -- to question ‘the relevance’ of questions (Stengers, 2018) in early childhood research. We ask: how does a question move us to respond to ongoing and intensifying violences that children are unevenly living, right now? How do we begin to defamiliarize the questions early childhood research in Canada knows, so well, how to ask?
The 2025 CAREC Pre-Conference proposes a participatory context for studying questions by emphasizing discussion and experimentation around questions-in-the-making. This move away from a question already asked or understood, and toward an unfinished question, happens in explicit response to colonial politics of recognition that continue to affirm and reproduce what is already intelligible to early childhood research in Canada. As the Call for Papers describes, we have invited graduate students and early career scholars to grapple with the complexities of questioning itself in early childhood research, and to bring propositions for rethinking and remaking questions with others in dialogue at the event.
How might tuning in to the labour of dialogue -- prompted by questions -- open up CAREC’s capacity to refigure early childhood research in Canada? How might we do ‘radicalizing’ dialogue as a productive process that transforms all of us differently, while resisting sheltered retreat or siloed echo chambers? As a diverse collective of early childhood researchers, we want to do the messy and potentially energizing work of studying the force that calls on us to think/act/feel, and to figure out, “what makes a group hang together?” (Stengers, 2018, p. 78).
Together, as CAREC continues to build our collective, we lean into the tensions, disjunctures, affinities, agitations, and possibilities of doing early childhood research in Canada.
Flow of the day
Please download the PDF below for pre-conference schedule
Registration Information
Registration: We invite all CAREC members and educators, graduate students, undergraduate students, researchers, faculty and other stakeholders new to CAREC to participate. All presenters and reviewer-chairs must also pre-register.
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You are not automatically registered through your acceptance.
To register, please:
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Go to the CSSE Membership Portal: https://www.assocsrv.ca/csse/index.asp?lang=e
Then, if you are a member of CSSE:
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Log into existing membership profile
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Go to the event module (2nd cell from top, under Member Record)
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From the scroll-down menu choose “2025 CAREC preconference Inciting and Sustaining Radical Dialogue in Early Childhood Research”
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Click on “Registration” and follow instructions
Or, if you are not currently a member of CSSE:
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Go to “Event Registration (without CSSE Member Login)”
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From the scroll-down menu choose “2025 CAREC preconference Inciting and Sustaining Radical Dialogue in Early Childhood Research”
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Click on “Registration” and follow instructions
Presenter Fees
Waived (Free)
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You are registered for the CSSE 2025 conference and have paid the CAREC membership fee
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You are an early childhood educator (working with children under 5)
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You are a student who self-identifies as a member of an equity-deserving group(s)
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Recipients of CAREC Graduate Student Research Awards
Reduced ($25)
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You are a full-time student (undergraduate, graduate, or diploma with a valid student ID card)
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You are a K-12 educator
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You are retired
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You are unemployed
Regular ($50)
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You are employed and do not self-identify for the Reduced or Waived Fee
If you would like to share information about the Pre-Conference with others, Pre-Conference posters and sharable images are available for download. We greatly appreciate your help and interest!
Questions
If you have any questions or concerns, we are happy to engage via email (nancyvangroll@capilanou.ca and alexandra.berry@ucalgary.ca) or Zoom chat. Just let us know.
We’re looking forward to our time together,
Alex and Nancy on behalf of CAREC Pre-Conference Committee