Disrupting Developmentalism in Canadian Early Years Education: Centring Marginalized Knowledges

Disrupting Developmentalism in Canadian Early Years Education challenges dominant discourses about children and childhood by centring marginalized and subjugated voices, experiences, and knowledges. Confronting systemic white supremacy, cis-heteronormativity, ableism, and sanism rooted in developmental psychology, the authors invite educators to imagine new possibilities for understanding children, childhood, and education. The collection explores critical activist knowledges for disrupting developmentalism through contributions from teachers, practitioners, and educators, including narratives and lived experiences. This text will be an invaluable resource for early childhood education, teacher education, and child and youth studies programs in Canadian colleges and universities with courses focusing on child development, equity, diversity, inclusion, critical perspectives and/or contemporary issues in early childhood education.

Adam Davies (they/them/he/him/all) is a tenured associate professor in the School of Fine Arts and Music, College of Arts, University of Guelph and is a registered early childhood educator and Ontario certified teacher. Adam’s work investigates issues pertaining to social justice and equity in early childhood education, K–12 schooling, and higher education. Adam is a queer, neurodivergent, and Mad(dened) activist, scholar, and teacher/educator/practitioner. Adam holds a PhD in curriculum studies and teacher development with collaborative specializations in women and gender studies and sexual diversity studies from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Adam recently co-edited the text Queering Professionalism: Pitfalls and Possibilities with Cameron Greensmith (University of Toronto Press).

Zuhra Abawi is an assistant professor of education at Niagara University and Chair of the Master of Educational Leadership program. Prior to her faculty appointment, she was an elementary teacher and early childhood educator. She holds a doctorate in social justice education from the University of Toronto. Her teaching experience spans K–12 to higher education. She is the author of The Effectiveness of Educational Policy for Bias-Free Hiring: Critical Insights to Enhance Diversity in the Canadian Teacher Workforce (2021) and co-editor of Equity as Praxis in Early Childhood Education and Care (2021) and Enacting Anti-Racist and Activist Pedagogies in Education: Canadian Perspectives (2023) and Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools: Canadian Perspectives (2025). Her work focuses on how discourses of race, equity, and identity are negotiated, mediated, and socialized in education.

Brooke Richardson (she/her) is a care activist, scholar, and mother motivated by the belief that good care is foundational to meaningful lives and a democratic society. Brooke is an assistant professor in child and youth studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada. Her research and scholarly work focus on disrupting increasingly privatized “care” systems (child care and child protection) and working toward societies that uphold the integrity of all those involved (children, mothers, educators, social workers). Brooke published two co-edited anthologies in 2022: Feminisms and the Early Childhood Educator: Critical Conversations (Bloomsbury, with Rachel Langford) and Mothering on the Edge: A Critical Examination of Mothering within Child Protection Systems (Demeter Press).