Search

In this paper we share findings from a historical investigation into changing expectations regarding teacher conduct as connected to the evolving Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation Code of Ethics and the eventual proclamation of a Government-mandated teacher regulatory board. This study was based on the idea that views of appropriate conduct embedded in ethical codes evolve in relation to shifting societal norms and values. We demonstrate that the tone and content of ethical codes of conduct for Saskatchewan teachers transformed from explicit and concrete to abstract and ambiguous.

This paper is a collective attempt to respond creatively to a research project we were part of entitled Sketching Narratives of Movement: Towards Comprehensive and Competent Early Childhood Educational Systems Across Canada. We share our slow process of thinking, collaborating, wondering, and pausing along with the figure of the snail as we improvise a nonlinear path towards an unknown future. We think-with various theories of change as a response to narratives shared by participants in the project's knowledge mobilization events: two public webinars and the production of a series of short video interviews. The pandemic simultaneously (re)inscribed ECEC with familiar discourses and narratives, yet, it also issued forth the potential for new imaginaries. ECEC was suddenly positioned as a critical community life-sustaining space for entire systems stressed by a pandemic. Amidst the attention, however, "slimy" traces of chronic neglect, underfunding, and undervaluing of ECEC were gleaming. Given the unpredictable momentum, we argue that it is "essential" that we open up ECEC to different narratives of movement. To this end, we offer five theoretical capsules titled: Slowing, Desiring, Haunting, Hospicing, and Longing as provocations for storying care otherwise and for stirring ethical consideration with potentialities for slow activism in ECEC.