ABSTRACT
“Let it go! It’s all about ‘letting go’”, said two of the early childhood teachers, reflecting on their role as teachers after a year of arts-based encounters involving community artists in their centres. Exactly what was being let go of, I (John) wondered. What they had let go of seemed less significant than that they had let go of it. Their talk seemed infused with a sense of inquiry as becoming, such that becoming became the sine qua non of teaching – and learning (their students’ and their own). The event of which I was part was a MAPS (Move, Act, Play, Sing) research cluster day. MAPS was a two-year TLRI (Teaching and Learning Research Initiative)-funded project that involved a dancer, storyteller and musician exploring forms of collective practice cum action research alongside teachers, children and their families from the early childhood centres. On this day, the teachers were sharing their journeys as practitioner-researchers. They were reflecting on the expectations of the participating adults when they took up a teaching role. They seemed to believe that they had let go of control: of their personal power in the classroom, and of the institutional power that was vested in their practice – and this process as a significant, perhaps necessary, interruption, or even disruption, of their teaching practice.
