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This research captures early childhood educators' (ECEs') perspectives when communicating with families about their children's diverse gender expression. Since families and ECEs play a pivotal role in shaping young children's understandings of gender it is necessary to learn more about ECEs' communications with families. The data that informs this paper is derived from a qualitative research study that used semi-structured focus groups with 15 ECEs who work with young children, ages 3-5 years, at licensed early childhood centres in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The ECEs were invited to participate in two focus group sessions to discuss their experiences after recalling conversations with families whose children identify outside the traditional constructs of masculine boy/feminine girl. One central finding the ECEs observe is the displeasure fathers have when their sons engage in feminine interests, including the affective actions the fathers then take to remove stereotypically feminine coded activities from their sons' lives. This research highlights the need for ongoing early childhood education training on gender diversity to better support non-binary, transgender children, and children from 2SLGBTQIA+ families.

In advancing educational inclusion efforts this critical position paper makes explicit the relevance of new materialism as a pedagogy to counter the dominant special education models in Canadian and Australian school contexts. This paper argues the implementation of special education policies and programs do not adequately address the complexity of children and young people with disabilities experiences. New materialism as a form of pedagogy however can prioritize learners with disabilities embodied, relational connections to school and destabilize highly medicalized functional pedagogical approaches. The material turn in schools is a welcoming pedagogical framework that places the material body and the emergent learner at the center of our practice.

This paper examines how two men with autism spectrum (AS) experience educational spaces having attended public school in Nova Scotia, Canada. Smooth and striated space is mobilised as the main conceptual framework to account for the men's affectivities when experiencing the educational terrain. The central aim when applying smooth and striated space is thinking through variation with attentiveness to the men's situated movements. A discourse focusing on the men's affective relations to school spaces counters over-coded special education frameworks that have largely centred on students with AS functionality in remedial educational settings. The concern when only knowing students with AS through normative functionality discourses is that it produces a homogenous line of thinking with limited attendance to their everyday situated worlds. Here, by attuning to the men's spatial experiences we can begin to think in more open ways rather than AS subjects preconfigured to given positions.

This paper explores the connections a young man with autism spectrum (AS) made using cyborg imagery having attended school in Nova Scotia, Canada. Cyborg is applied as a conceptual approach to explore the young man's connections to human and nonhuman elements. We also make use of rhizomes as a methodological framework to support the exploration of the young man's multiplicity of experiences with cyborg configurations. Data are drawn from a semi-structured interview with the young man where he demonstrated his capacity to employ cyborg imagery as a means to rearticulate his social identity when experiencing school on the periphery. A diffractive reading of the data produced alternative understandings outside contemporary thought on his schooling experiences. Findings challenge educators in applying cyborg to cut across static social categories and theorize new social knowledge on the experiences of students with AS.

In advancing educational inclusion efforts this critical position paper makes explicit the relevance of new materialism as a pedagogy to counter the dominant special education models in Canadian and Australian school contexts. This paper argues the implementation of special education policies and programs do not adequately address the complexity of children and young people with disabilities experiences. New materialism as a form of pedagogy however can prioritize learners with disabilities embodied, relational connections to school and destabilize highly medicalized functional pedagogical approaches. The material turn in schools is a welcoming pedagogical framework that places the material body and the emergent learner at the center of our practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]