Following the witch’s flight: Reimagining professionalism in early childhood literacy education

Abstract

Amidst renewed “reading wars,” censorship debates, and yet another “crisis” in literacy, early childhood educators are facing increased pressure to develop and demonstrate professional dispositions that are linked to content knowledge, values, attitudes, and ethics. This article explores professionalism otherwise in early childhood literacies—as a post↔feminist↔“witchy”↔assemblage. We think-with the figure of the witch as a heuristic to highlight the hegemonic production of professionalism as taking place with/in the project of colonialism. We present a case for embracing the “witchy” nature of literacies as central to a reconceptualization of professionalism in early childhood education. We argue that to think professionalism otherwise involves following “the witch's flight.” We ask: How can thinking-with the post↔feminist↔witch trouble/unsettle colonialist grammars, resignifying professionalism in early childhood education? While the witch/witchcraft cannot quite escape colonialist histories, we consider how its relations to literacies enable us to reimagine professional early childhood education communities that aren't oriented toward colonial violence and the post-enlightenment subject of Man.