The difference childhood makes: Uniqueness, accommodation, and the ethics of otherness

This article examines how the concept of childhood shapes understandings of social difference in education, with a focus on the intersections of ability, disability, and pedagogy. Through an exploration of childhood objects, teacher candidates' reflections revealed three recurring ways to approach difference: as an expression of individual uniqueness, as requiring accommodation, and as an irreconcilable disruption. We draw on Lauren Berlant to show how narratives of uniqueness and accommodation tended to reaffirm the ‘cruel optimism’ of normative developmental frameworks and ideals of assimilation. We further show how moments of disruptive difference unsettled and inconvenienced these paradigms, creating openings to reflect on educators’ own ways of embodying alterity to create a space for criticality. By centering the ethical possibilities inherent in disruptive differences, this work invites educators to imagine education not as a site of management or resolution, but as a space of relational interdependence, where coexistence depends on valuing the inconvenience of difference. Our findings call for a reimagining of pedagogy as an ethical encounter that embraces the complexity of living with and through difference.