Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Edu-Crafting and Ontological Becomings-With: Affective Encounters with Mosquitoes Are Good

Resonating with the ontological shift in the paradigm of teacher education, this study explored possibilities of relational ontology and relational pedagogy in pre-service early childhood teachers’ becomings through collaborative edu-crafting. In the ‘Studies on Early Childhood Teacher Education’ course, encounters with a picture book entitled Mosquitoes Are Good evoked rhizomatic movements and weaved poetry, children’s literature, web magazine design, architecture, and music production, along with studies on ecological crisis, poverty, disability, and social exclusion, which empowered their makings-doings-knowings, Pre-service teachers overcame anthropocentrism by witnessing the troubled world in the positions of mosquitoes, ants, and boa constrictor, while de-constructing adultcentrism that regards young children as less-than-human with deficits. They spoke hopeful narratives with generative powers while confronting and empathizing with sadness and agony of other existences, and responded to the ethics of care. Overlapped encounters with affectivity led them to material-discursive practices, while moving beyond prejudice, stereotypes, and boundaries, and reconfiguring education, teacher, and young children. This entangled experiment with edu-crafting suggests the needs for further research on ways to support pre-service teachers’ journey of becoming-with and enhance their curricular performativity.