The introductory session describes emergent curriculum and offers several experiential workshops that allow participants to grasp structural aspects that support emergent learning. The session focuses on inquiry-based, arts-based and play-based participatory structures that sustain rich, experiential classrooms in which children become highly self regulated and eager to learn.

The image of children and educators is one of competence, resourcefulness, and intelligence. The image of learning is that learning occurs in relations and relationships: it is the study of connections that children make that allows educators to deepen and sustain learning. We imagine kindergarten and early learning settings as places full of movement, beauty and delight in which children and educators expand their curiosity, creativity, engagement and relations with families, school, and community, while also enjoying appropriate literacy and numeracy experiences. We ask:

How does our view of learning alter if we consider children full of competence, resourcefulness and capability?

How do children know that their school cherishes them for their efforts to learn and participate in the world?

This session introduces each of the five sessions so that participants have a sense of what is to come. We discuss concepts and exemplars of emergent curriculum, and experience a workshop that activates the creativity of participants through creating with graphic materials. We discuss concepts of relationships and networks of relations. We try out a type of conversation that gets us to generate our own theories in response to an inquiry question. We explore pedagogical documentation.

We consider invitations that allow families to be participants rather than recipients of a service. We consider place and culture as aspects of a classroom’s identity.

Topics include concepts and exemplars of emergent curriculum, of relationships and networks of relations, of conversations that generate theories, of pedagogical documentation and of beautiful, well-organized environments that sustain learning. Experiential workshops include experiences of documenting and interpreting documentation with others, experiences of creating with materials, experiences of generating theories in response to an inquiry question.

We ask how can we create experiences that ignite investigations among children and educators? Participants are invited to consider the role of the teacher as one of provocateur, active listener and collaborator. The responsive adult plays with children – asking questions, interacting, stimulating. What might this look, sound and feel like? How might adults become engaged in the content of inquiry as active learners, rather than dispensers of knowledge? While this shift in the stance of the teacher can destabilize our practice, it also brings renewal and emergence of new possibilities that sustain educators.