This essay brings together three intergenerational colleagues, two RECE founders, and a mid-career colleague, engaged in reciprocal mentorship, collaborative projects, and research focused on child care, critical policy studies, and global childhoods. We explore our encounters with RECE and how we have engaged with, been influenced by, and found various collaborative spaces through our reconceptualist/RECE experiences. In our dialogue, we discuss how we came to engage with reconceptualist scholarship and consider one of its tenets, reciprocal mentoring. We reflect on how the DAP debates have and still play a role in our scholarship, how naming and countering deficit discourse influence our work in early years policy, and the ways children’s voices, experiences, and participation rights need to be centered. We conclude by discussing current projects and future possibilities in our shared and individual work, exploring the implications for scholar activism and the future of reconceptualist work in early care and education.
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