Getting to know movement differently: Nurturing communicative,relational,and collective movement pedagogies with toddlers

Abstract

We share moments from ongoing pedagogical inquiry work with toddler-aged children, where we explore together how we might tentatively create conditions for movement to happen outside of the familiar, dominant, status-quo referents of individualism and motor skill development that anchor much physical activity curricula. Sharing pedagogical documentation images and stories, we present three provocations that we moved through with children. We describe how through engaging these provocations together, we came to know movement as communicative, relational, and collective. We conclude by recounting a provocation we hoped would spur conditions for moving differently beyond our habitual taken-for-granted methods of moving together. As we spend time with three provocation stories, we work hard to raise questions and uncertainties and to share our intentions and responses, rather than presenting our activities as universalizable or easily implementable practices. Throughout the article, we engage with movement conditions and pedagogies as ethical and political concerns.