International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Angell, M. (2024). C(h)ords of care. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 25(si1.20). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea25si1.20

Considering the ambiguous and ambivalent character of care relations, unpacking shared early care and what it does is of vital concern. This inquiry explores shared early care in/through conversations between parents and their child’s early childhood pedagogue. Situated within an expanding, multifaceted field of arts-based research, this inquiry is not a quest for certainty or to describe, explain, predict, or solve problems. Rather, the aim is to enhance perspectives by generating new questions, concepts, and problematizations. Thus, C(h)ords of Care is created as a concept that expands shared early care into the more-than-verbal realm of affective forces, entanglements of migration, and atmosphere work through which shared early care is relationally produced. This move allows for some of the wonders and struggles involved in shared early care to come to the fore without limiting these to the (good or bad) intentions of human individuals, such as parents and pedagogues.