BA, PDP (Early Childhood Education), M.Ed., PhD
Chair, Education & Childhood Studies
Early Childhood Care & Education
School of Education & Childhood Studies
604.986.1911 ext. 3418
Birch Building, room BR331
kkummen@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, 2014.
M.Ed., Early Childhood Education, University of Manitoba, 1984.
Early Childhood Education Professional Development Program, University of Manitoba, 1981.
BA, Psychology, University of Manitoba, 1980.
"Understanding teaching to be a deeply political act, I invite students to take up activism in our work so as to reimagine and enact early childhood education as matters of concern."
Bio
Inspired by reconceptualist, feminist materialist, common worlds and decolonial scholars, Kathleen Kummen (PhD, University of Victoria, 2014) is interested in exploring childhoods, subjectivity and relational learning.
In particular, she is guided by questions that ask:
- What does it mean to live well with others, both human and more than human?
- What pedagogical conditions do we want to create for children in the 21st century who are living with the legacies of colonization, environmental catastrophe, racism, and globalization?
- How can we invoke pedagogical practices that invite educators, students, and children to engage as political agents so that classrooms are sites where political and ethical practices for living well with others can flourish?
As a postsecondary instructor, these questions ask her to engage in activities, in and beyond the classroom, that disrupt and contest pedagogies that reinstate practices emerging from cognitive imperialism and human-centric understandings.
Her pedagogical practices with education students and research in early childhood education, strive to make space for more contextually situated curricula and pedagogies that reflect the complex lives of real children.
Living and teaching on colonized lands requires her to grapple with my relationship with colonization. Reconciliation will be hard and painful work, because it means acknowledging that we, as settlers, are not innocent, that we are, in fact, implicated in colonization.
As a researcher, Kummen is committed to making the politics of education visible to my students and calling on them to learn the colonial history of these lands.
As a researcher and educator of early childhood educators, she aspires to not simply draw students attention to how hegemonic discourses regulate practice, but to attend, with students, to how to live/teach/research in a world of competing and contradictory discourses.
Understanding teaching to be a deeply political act, I invite students to take up activism in our work so as to reimagine and enact early childhood education as matters of concern.
In my classes, I engage with students in ways aimed at moving beyond localized observations of children for the purpose of applying them generally to teaching practices, attending instead to entanglements that provoke difficult, complicated conversations of what it means to live well with human and more-than-human others.
I take seriously the importance of making visible in the postsecondary classroom the histories of knowledge in education that allowed for such violence as residential schools and continue to marginalize particular groups of people.
My scholarship is grounded in reconceptualist, feminist, poststructural, and, more recently, posthumanist theoretical perspectives. It analyzes and interrogates the historical and social conditions of the ECE field and the complex, situated experiences of young children, their families, and educators.
In all aspects of my work, I strive to make visible the hegemonic force of Eurocentric developmental theories that produce ongoing injustices for those outside of the dominant group.
As a researcher, educator, and instructor, I endeavour to reimagine and revitalize early childhood leadership as an ongoing practice of disruption to make space for alternative narratives of early childhood education.
Selected Refereed Publications
Book Chapters
Kummen, K. Crowing: Coevolving relationships. In B. D. Hodgins (Ed.), Feminist research for 21st-century childhoods: Common worlds methods. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Hodgins, B. D., & Kummen, K. Transformative pedagogical encounters: Leading and learning in/as a collective movement. In S. Cheeseman & R. Walker (Eds.), Pedagogies for leading practice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.
Hodgins, B. D., Thompson, D., & Kummen, K. Weavings, walks, and wonderings: Stories of the liveliness of pedagogical narrations. In A. F. Fleet, C. Patterson, & J. Robertson (Eds.), Pedagogical documentation in early years practice: seeing through multiple perspectives. SAGE, 2017.
Hodgins, B. D, Kummen, K., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Thompson, D. Entangling and reconceptualizing research/practice binaries in laboratory schools in British Columbia. In R. Langford & A. Di Santo (Eds.), Leading the way: Recognizing the role of early learning lab schools in Canadian universities and colleges(pp. 4248). Retrieved from http://www.ryerson.ca/ecs 2013.
Kummen, K., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Thompson, D. Making developmental knowledge stutter. Continuing pedagogical explorations with collective biography. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw & L. Prochner (Eds.), Re-situating Canadian early childhood education(pp. 125145). New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012.
Kummen, K. Once upon a time there was a ready child: Challenging readiness as a single story. In A. Pence & J. White (Eds.), Child and youth care: Critical perspectives on pedagogy, practice, and policy(pp. 199218). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.
Kummen, K. Is it time to put tidy up time away? Contesting routines and transitions in early childhood spaces. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw (Ed.), Flows, rhythms, and intensities of early childhood education curriculum (pp. 98112). New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010.
Articles in Scholarly Refereed Journals
Hodgins, B. D. & Kummen, K. (forthcoming) Learning collectives with/in sites of practice: Beyond training and professional development. Journal of Childhood Studies.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Kummen, K. Shifting temporal frames in children's common worlds in the Anthropocene.Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(4), 431441, 2017.
Kummen, K. When matter in the classroom matters: Encounters with race in pedagogical conversations.International Journal of Child, Youth, and Family Studies, 5(4.2), 808825, 2014.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Becoming intimate with developmental knowledge: Pedagogical explorations with collective biography. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 57(3), 335354, 2010.
Selected Non-Refereed Publications and Conference Presentations
Published Conference Papers
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Thompson, D. Entangling and reconceptualizing research/practice binaries in laboratory schools in British Columbia. In R. Langford & A. Di Santo (Eds.), Leading the way: Recognizing the role of early learning lab schools in Canadian universities and colleges (pp. 42-48), 2013. Retrieved from http://www.ryerson.ca/ecs/
Keynote Addresses
Kummen, K. Disrupting a single image of a child: Engaging in ethical practice. To Learn to Wonder, North Vancouver, BC, 2011.
Unpublished Conference Papers
Kummen, K., & Argent, A. Intensities, rhythms, and flows in the toddler room. Paper presented at British Columbia Aboriginal Childhood Annual Conference. Richmond, BC, 2018.
Kummen, K., & Rowan, C. Doing early childhood on colonized lands. Paper presented at Canadian Association for Research in Early Childhood (CAREC) Post-CSSE Conference. Regina, Saskatchewan, 2018.
Heydon, R., B. D. Hodgins, Kummen, K., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. Recomposing activism in the 21st century: The early childhood pedagogies. Paper presented at Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference, Toronto, Ontario, 2017.
Hodgins, B. D., & Kummen, K. Pedagogical narrations in the postsecondary classroom. Paper presented at Early Childhood Educators of BC annual meeting, Richmond, BC, 2015.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Kummen, K. Mobilizing reconceptualist early childhood education practices. Paper presented at Child Care 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2014.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. A methodology for/of disruption in child and youth care practices. Paper presented at Child and Youth Care in Action IV Conference, Victoria, BC, 2014.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Pedagogical narrations: A pedagogical practice, a research methodology. Paper presented at Early Childhood Educators of BC annual meeting, Richmond, BC, 2014.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Kummen, K. Post-anthropocentric childhoods. Paper presented at Thinking Through Deleuze conference, Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, 2014.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., Rose, S., & Thompson, D. Pedagogical narrations as a methodology for qualitative educational research. Paper presented at American Educational Research Association annual general meeting, San Francisco, California, 2013.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Entanglements and complexities of pedagogical documentation. Paper presented at Embracing Complexity in the Daily Life of the School: The Learning Process Through Observation, Interpretation and Documentation, New Westminster, BC, 2013.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Critically exploring pedagogical narrations in early years research and practice. Paper presented at International Innovations in ECE: A Canadian Forum on Early Childhood Frameworks, Victoria, BC, 2012.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Dethroning the single voice: Pedagogical narrations in early years research and practice. Paper presented at 2nd National Early Learning Lab School Conference Leading the Way, Toronto, Ontario, 2012.
Hodgins, B. D., & Kummen, K. Pedagogical narrations: Opportunities for practice in the postsecondary classroom. Paper presented at Transforming Our Childhood Programs, Vancouver, BC, 2012.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Dethroning the single voice: Pedagogical narrations in early years research and practice. Paper presented at Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference, London, England, 2011.
Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Thompson, D. Dethroning the single voice: Pedagogical narrations in early years research and practice. Paper presented at Child and Youth Care in Action III Conference, Victoria, BC, 2011.
Kummen, K. Making space for disruption in the education of early childhood educators. Paper presented at REACH Graduate Symposium, University of Victoria, BC, 2009.
Kummen, K. Disrupting a single image of a child: Engaging in ethical practice. Paper presented at REACH Graduate Symposium, University of Victoria, BC, 2008.
Conference Poster and Panel Contributions
Blaise, M., Kummen, K., & Hamm, C. Common worlding methods: Shimmering and rowing: Activating pedagogies of concern. Presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Education of Research in Education, Toronto, Ontario, 2019.
Kummen, K., & Kind, S. Encounters with food waste in studio spaces: Activating responsibilities to matter.Presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Education of Research in Education, Toronto, Ontario, 2019.
Pence, A., White, J., Morris, J., Hodgins, B. D., Kummen, K., & Newbury, J. Critical perspectives in child and youth care: A book project. Presented at Child and Youth Care in Action III Conference, Victoria, BC, 2011.
Agnes Shahariw Memorial Scholarship, University of Victoria, 2009-2010.
REACH Recognition for Exemplary Graduate Research Award, University of Victoria, 2009.
REACH Recognition for Exemplary Graduate Research Award, University of Victoria, 2008.