"The Materiality of Play: Early Childhood Education Research in Diffractive Dialogue with Dance as an Artistic Practice" will run from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Zoom, and will feature guest speaker Tatiana Zakharova, an emerging scholar pursuing her doctorate at Western University (London, Canada).

Interest in play is experiencing a renaissance, with much been written in academic journals and discussed in professional and social media. Zakharova is among those interested in play, and with a background in design, she looks at materiality of play through the feminist practice of 鈥渕isreading to produce a reading鈥� (Jagodzinski, 1992, p. 172).

That is, instead of holding up play as an entity and an idea so solid that it even has a public 鈥減rofile鈥� that needs raising, Zakharova's proposition is to tease play apart into moments that may be entirely insignificant or subject-forming, that may be joyous or violent, that may open possibilities or may be propping up chaos and indeterminacy.

This talk will be in dialogue with Justine Chambers who will engage with Zakharova's propositions in diffractive ways from her perspective as a dancer, choreographer and mother. Zakharova will introduce her research on play and Chambers will introduce her artistic practice. Together they will present a dialogue as an invitation to reimagine our relations to play.

About Tatiana Zakharova
Zakharova is a playground designer, and is currently pursuing her PhD at the Faculty of Education at Western University (London, ON). In her multidisciplinary work, Zakharova thinks with feminist posthuman scholars to trouble the notion of play as a means of progress, imagining instead relationship-attuned play as worlding. With gratitude, Zakharova lives, walks, plays, and writes on the traditional territories of the Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and Ojibway/Chippewa peoples.

About Justine Chambers
Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Skwxw煤7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there 鈥� the social choreographies present in the everyday. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite鈥檚 mother.

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Article is from the April 6, 2021 edition of

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Welcome to the November 2020 issue of Innovatus, a special issue of YFile that is devoted to teaching and learning innovation at 91亚色.

This issue of Innovatus focuses on teaching, learning and the student experience in the Faculty of Education. I am so pleased by the rich variety of stories offered in this issue because they showcase the expansive depth of the Faculty's approach to the "act of education" to quote Interim Dean Sharon Murphy.

Education is universal and the Faculty's work with refugees in the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya, homeless youth and in re-envisioning early childhood education are displayed among the fine stories offered in this issue. As well, Dean Murphy's letter is a testament to the Faculty's commitment to excellence, and the story highlighting the innovation shown in moving the Faculty of Education's Summer Institute online and transforming it to a year-long effort is amazing. Encore!

Thank you again for the many wonderful comments about our September and October issues. I value each of your responses. Please continue to contact me with your ideas, classroom innovations and thoughts about teaching, learning and the student experience.

As I close, the snow is starting to fly and with it, the holidays are approaching. I would like to take a moment to wish each of you good health and happiness at home, which is especially important this year.

Featured in the November 2020 issue of Innovatus

In her letter to the community, Interim Dean Sharon Murphy writes about how the Faculty of Education is constantly working to enliven new visions of education and society, visions of possibility, equity and social justice. "Our work focuses not only inward on curriculum and pedagogy, but very much looks outward towards the idea of education being situated within a complex and seemingly evermore fragile world."

One of 91亚色's hallowed traditions, the Faculty of Education Summer Institute (FESI), may have bowed to COVID-19 in terms of format, but it is unbowed in terms of mission and content. For 2020-2021, the institute has morphed into a series of five free webinars titled Up Close and Personal: Conversations on Anti-Oppression.

Stephen Gaetz, the 91亚色 Research Chair in Homelessness and Research Impact and a professor in the Faculty of Education, is using his excellent research and communications skills and grant-writing ability to attack the challenges within youth homelessness, which need broad solutions and a meeting of many perspectives.

Rachel Silver, an assistant professor of education at 91亚色, with the help of a team of her colleagues in both Toronto and Dadaab, has created a virtual colloquium series, Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis, for the Faculty's Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) program. The series considers the issues arising from the confluence of education, the COVID-19 pandemic and new waves of resistance to anti-Black racism.

Lucy Angus and Cristina Delgado Vintimilla, assistant professors new to 91亚色 and the Faculty of Education, have created a lecture series titled Disrupting Early Childhood: Inheritance, Pedagogy, Curriculum to explore new ideas about early childhood education (ECE) and create a space to bring together the innovative research conversations that are changing the field of ECE.

Innovatus is produced by the Office of the Associate Vice-President Teaching & Learning in partnership with Communications & Public Affairs.

I extend a personal invitation to you to share your experiences in teaching, learning, internationalization and the student experience through the Innovatus story form, which is available at .

Will Gage
Associate Vice-President, Teaching & Learning

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