Viable vulnerabilities: Rethinking conference pedagogies

In 2025 we all live with a heightened sense of vulnerability. Daily, the rights of children and families are breeched in unconscionable ways. It is ever more urgent to sustain a sense of hopefulness and to imagine the world otherwise. All hope involves risk, and risk entails vulnerability to failure. Commonly understood as signaling potential physical or psychological harm, in some contexts vulnerability may be a source of strength and connectivity, a personal and social good. Our goal is to prompt conversations about the practical and emotional benefits of living vulnerably. We argue that for students and teachers alike, a posture of vulnerability can help us to remain open to who and what shows up in educative contexts. Initially a performance at the 2024 Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference challenging traditional “stand and deliver” modes of conference pedagogy, Viable Vulnerabilities employs an alternative format including “call and response” storytelling, music, and images. Our conference performance, worked through affect rather than reason, prompting the sympathetic imagination rather than the absorption of predigested conclusions. We hope this text will function similarly for readers of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education.