How do we “keep time” using an ethics of care perspective for and with children in their common worlds?

Shared by Shelley O’Brien

On a recent field trip with my daughter’s daycare, I noticed the educators were focused on the children moving in a straight line, in a timely fashion to arrive at the destination. My own PhD work touches on how children’s time-worlds are often very at odds with development-focused and goal-oriented curricula. As there was no chance for stopping, my daughter and I had little choice but to “fall in line”. I sang a little song to her to “keep time”, in a different way than the teachers were. This was a  small (re)configuring, using an ethics of care perspective and Collett et al’s slow pedagogy, to “disperse time and bring in aspects of collaboration, attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust” and safeguard a different sort of time (Collett et al., 2018, p. 121).

Collett, K. S., van den Berg, C. L., Verster, B., & Bozalek, V. (2018). Incubating a slow pedagogy in professional academic development: An ethics of care perspective. South African Journal of Higher Education, 32(6), 117-136.