Thinking with: Relationality and Lively Connections Within Urbanised Outdoor Community Environments

Siew Chin Ng, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in early childhood education at the Singapore University of Social Sciences in Singapore. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include early childhood curriculum, adult–child interaction, and teacher professional learning. She started adopting the post-qualitative inquiry and post-humanist perspectives for her research works, while exploring alternative perspectives of early childhood education. Siew Chin is keen to rethink current ways of doing in order to promote novel understanding and contribute to meaning making with the world.

Jeanne Marie Iorio, Ed.D., is an Associate Professor in early childhood studies at The University of Melbourne. Her work in post-qualitative inquiry seeks to disrupt dominant discourses in early childhood and rethink pedagogies, practices, and policies towards meaning-making. Her current work Learning with Place© uses speculative fiction to create future-focused hopeful climate stories (see learningwithplace.org). This research informs Walking with Lilly, a children’s television program that enacts innovative practices that work towards positive climate action.

Nicola Yelland is Professor of early childhood studies and the Director of the Global Childhoods Research Hub in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She has a PhD from the University of Queensland and has been an academic in the University sector for over three decades. Her teaching and research interests are related to transformative pedagogies and the use of new technologies in school and community contexts that document multimodal learning and meaning making. Most recently she has been applying these ideas in the context of STEM learning ecologies in which young children are engaging in inquiries that promote STEM thinking in active and innovative ways. She has worked in East Asia and examined the culture and curriculum of school settings. Nicola’s work engages with educational issues with regard to varying social, economic and political conditions and thus requires multidisciplinary perspectives. Nicola effectively links research with practice so that her audiences are able to critically explore the nexus of theory and practice.