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A collection of 84 author's testimonies and workspace photographs between 18 March and 5 May 2020

In this chapter we reposition our thinking on our own pedagogies in ECE teacher education, by arguing for a reimagination of pedagogy and practice in the field of higher education. Positioned in the neoliberal, culturally diverse landscape of our two Aotearoa New Zealand universities, nuanced insights throughout our chapter reveal an already tangled inter- and intra-dependent web with and beyond human actors in higher education. Arguing through Kristeva and Braidotti, we (re)imagine thing/energy/nature/culture connections between human and posthuman conceptions in their messy, multidirectional, unpredictable performances of ECE student teachers’ histories, politics and realities. The meanings and energy inherent in these philosophical analsyses expose unexpected onto-epistemological connections of human and posthuman relationships with multiple wider worlds and theorisations. Exposing these cracks is not a comfort then, of sameness, smoothness or familiarity, but an enlivening elevation into further possible ECE pedagogical realities and uncertainties.

Examining our own pasts, and particularly childhoods, is not an easy task. For academics, to conduct a substantial reflection and analysis of the ideologies and complexities of their own childhoods, should perhaps come more easily because of our training and the nature of our profession—to think, speak, read, and write. However, perhaps this is not true at all—perhaps it is much harder to bare ourselves in front of our academic colleagues and friends, in a competitive, and sometimes very judgmental, environment. Writing ourselves is a brave step that leaves an articulated part of ourselves on paper, on a screen, in a certain sense and form, ‘forever.’ We cannot reclaim our private narrative once it has been published. It does not belong just to us anymore. Rereading in print what we once wrote about our own childhoods is a very bold, very courageous exercise, one that can leave a mark on our minds and bodies, perhaps in the same way as these narratives from bygone times once did, as our very own ‘lived experiences.’